Micka

Micka loves drawing and wants a pup but with older brothers into violence and petty crime and a mother who cant read the notes his teacher sends home from school neither he nor the pup stand much of a chance. Then a new boy Laurie starts at Mickas school. The two boys both have vivid imaginations but Lauries fantasies are of magic and revenge and he soon pulls Micka into a dangerous game where the line between makebelieve and real life and ultimately death is increasingly blurred. Written in direct uncompromising yet compassionate prose and with a breathtaking clarity of insight Micka is an astonishingly assured debut and an unforgettable story. Micka feels like a book that wrote itself . . . Frances Kay is an accomplished story teller who has found her darkest tale Anne Enright I read this at a single sitting. Once started it was impossible to put aside . . . Atomising and searing MICKA is a remarkable first novel Carlo Gbler