The Knife That Killed Me
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
Anthony McGowan is the Carnegie Medal 2020 winning author of Lark.
He is coming to kill me.
Now would be a good time to run.
I cannot run.
I am too afraid to run.
Paul Varderman could be at any normal school - bullies, girls and annoying teachers are just a part of life. Unfortunately 'normal' doesn't apply when it comes to the school's most evil bully, Roth, a twisted and threatening thug with an agenda quite unlike anyone else. When Paul ends up delivering a message from Roth to the leader of a gang at a nearby school, it fuels a rivalry with immediate consequences. Paul attempts to distance himself from the feud, but when Roth hands him a knife it both empowers him and scares him at the same time . . .
This thought-provoking and original novel highlights the terrible consequences of peer pressure and violence, and casts a spotlight on the worrying rise in knife crime among teenagers.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
McGowan's third novel is a dramatic page-turner and gripping meditation on power and violence. Narrating from a gray place, teenager Paul Vardeman takes readers back to his rigid Catholic high school, where the teachers can be as cruel as the students ( It was a place where you always felt like there was a belt around your chest, tightening, squeezing, and another weight on your head, keeping you bowed down, eyes to the ground ). When a manipulative bully forces Paul to deliver a gruesome package to a rival school's gang leader, it reignites longstanding hostilities, which rapidly escalate. Insecure and conflicted, Paul is pushed further down a dark road, which McGowan (Jack Tumor) counterbalances with Paul's growing friendship with a group of outsider students, the freaks, including his crush. A sense of dread never really dissipates as the story hurtles toward an epic, primal battle, but McGowan has twists in store, making the final scenes as surprising as they are inevitable. The language often borders on mythic, giving the novel an unsettling, ancient quality, not unlike that of violence itself. Ages 14 up.
Customer Reviews
My review
This is my mums account that I am talkin on but YH im 14 and I've been reading this book at school good book about a kid a school basically he is a nobody and I think it is a really good book at school we are on chapter 18 there is two gangs and a hard nut Roth i think that is his name he has two d***head friends and gets the nobody to do his wrong doings so YH buy the book