The Awful Tale of Agatha Bilk

The problem with Agatha Bilk is that she is a pyromaniac. After setting fire to her school and almost killing a group of her schoolmates, Agatha is sent to the Tread Quietly Clinic for Interesting Children where she meets other children with problems, not as serious as her own but none the less highly dysfunctional in their effects and not receiving very much help from the doctors/ brothers Tim and Alan Humphrey who run the clinic.

Now that brief resume of the plot might make you think that this is a serious book dealing seriously with very serious issues, but it isn't. Instead the narrative resorts to farce and treats every issue, even the burning of the school, with a levity and a lack of kindness that I found very disengaging.

I know that young readers love a certain amount of cruelty in their fiction and that is fine as long as the fiction is part of an imagined world. But there are many people of all ages who have to cope with conditions that often cause great stress to themselves and to the people with whom they come in contact. Often such ill people, when young, have to cope with a great deal of teasing from their peers. The depiction of the two doctors at the clinic as mumbling ineffectuals hardly helps matters.

I hope there is a more positive book for young readers, dealing with these types of problems, on its way. Maybe it already exists.

The Awful Tale of Agatha Bilk by Sian Pattenden. Short Books €8.50. Age 9 plus