Freewill

Another of the book's short-listed for the 2005 Bisto Book of the Year Awards and another journey through the angst-ridden, teenage world.

Another of the book's short-listed for the 2005 Bisto Book of the Year Awards and another journey through the angst-riddrn, teenage world. Will, the leading character, has lost his parents and his stepmother in not only tragic but, perhaps, suspicious accidents. He now lives with grandparents and attends a special needs school where he is showing great skill and talent as a carpenter craftsman. But his ambition is to be a pilot for which he shows no ability whatsoever. The demons inside his head add to his confusion and alienation to the point of schizophrenia.

Then totems that he has carved are found at the locations of several teenage suicides. A fact that Will cannot explain and which attracts not only the attention of the police but also the members of a local death worshippers' sect, who see him as "the man", who can predict where the next suicide will occur.

The entire narrative in internalised in Will's head. The style is staccato, almost in the style of outsider French fiction in the 1950s and 1960s and is so relentless in its scrutiny of this young man's mind that you are not left with feelings of empathy or even sympathy but of engagement with what is happening and is likely to happen to him. A book with a life beyond its final sentence.

Freewill by Chris Lynch from Bloomsbury, €8.85.  Ages 15 to 17.

Tony Hickey