Published: 2020, Penguin Random House
Genre: Fiction
Themes: parenting, death of a friend, road trip, stand up comedy
My rating (out of 5): ❤❤❤❤
If you ever feel in need of a book that will give you a hug and tell you that everything will be alright, then this is the book for you. You will quickly come to love little Norman Foreman, who is only twelve years old and suffers from terrible psoriasis, but you won't care because this is a boy who deserves to be loved.
Norman and his Mum are a family of two and he has never met his father as Mum isn't entirely sure who he is:
'There's a good chance Norman's father is one of four people. Now I know how that makes me sound, but it's a fairly reasonable alternative to the other scenario, which is that he would quite possibly have been one of several more if circumstances had allowed.'
Mum (Sadie) is warm and kind with a wicked sense of humour and there is nothing in the world that she wouldn't do for Norman. She is the human shield that stands between Norman and the rest of the world, and for the first six years of his life it felt as though she was the only friend he had. Then came Jax. Jax moved down to Cornwall from London and quickly alienated every child in the class with his brash London ways and confrontational attitude, but Norman saw something else in Jax, and that something else was a friend.
They quickly became 'The bloody Rolls-bloody-Royce of bloody best friends', even though they couldn't be more different, and all is well in Norman's world until Jax suddenly dies during an asthma attack at the age of twelve. (You get this information on the dust jacket so it doesn't count as a spoiler!) They had so much to look forward to as they grew up, and had even developed a five year plan to become stand-up comedians and perform the Edinburgh Fringe in 2023. Now it looked as though none of the plan would ever happen and Norman was left adrift in his life with nothing left to look forward to.
One night when Norman wass asleep, Sadie saw a new version of the five year plan, and although he had kept the line about getting to the Fringe, he had crossed out getting rich and famous and replaced it with: look after Mum and find Dad. She realises that getting to the Fringe is one thing, but finding Norman's father is going to be quite a challenge, and he may not like to hear that there is more than one candidate to consider.
So that is where the story begins. Norman, Sadie and an elderly workmate of hers called Leonard, begin a quest to find Norman's father and to get him to the Fringe that summer. The writing is light, humorous and friendly and the story-line has plenty of unexpected twists and turns to keep the reader interested. This is not great 'literature' but it is a great book and it really does have that feel-good factor. Well worth a read.
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