Monday 23 September 2013

Flip gets 5 stars

I've just finished reading Flip by Martyn Bedford.  An excellent read and I will add it to my top 100 children's books.

Fourteen year old Alex wakes up one morning in strange bed in a strange house and everyone is calling him Philip.  Not only that but time has moved forward 6 months.  When he looks into the mirror, he sees a stranger.  Somehow Alex has become Philip, in body if not in mind.

The idea of waking up with a new body or in a world where everyone thinks you are someone else has been the subject of several other novels including Charlotte Sometimes, The Tightrope Men and, of course, the film Freaky Friday.  Flip is about the impact of this switch on a sensitive adolescent and his family and friends, and how he deals with the resulting difficulties, emotional and practical.

The characterisation is excellent.  The book takes you into the world of modern teenagers or back to that critical stage in your own life when everything matters too much, but you feel powerless to influence anything.

More than this, the books is a real page-turner.  How and why did the switch occur? What happened to the real Philip?  Can Alex ever go back into his real body or will he be forever trapped in Philip's?

I'm not going to spoil the book for you by giving too much away here.  You'll have to read it for yourself.

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