Book info

• Title Fifteen Days Without a Head
• Author Dave Cousins
• Year 2011
• Genre Young Adult

Fifteen-year-old Laurence Roach just wants a normal life, but it's not easy when your mum is a depressed alcoholic, and your six-year-old brother thinks he's a dog. When Mum fails to come home one night, Laurence tells nobody, terrified he and his brother will be taken into care if anyone finds out. Instead, he attempts to keep up the pretence that Mum is still around: dressing up in her clothes to trick the neighbours and spinning an increasingly complicated tangle of lies. After two weeks on their own, running out of food and money, and with suspicious adults closing in, Laurence finally discovers what happened to his mother. And that's when the trouble really starts...

Thoughts

I hadn’t realised this was a children/young adult book until I started reading, which wasn’t a problem but it took me a while to adapt to it. I found the story to be overwhelmingly sad, chronicling the difficulties a teen boy has trying to keep a household together after his single parent mother disappears.

Searching for money for food, following the clues of his mum’s last known whereabouts, and trying to win a radio competition at the same time, his life is kept very busy! There’s something of a happy ending, but it still left me feeling kind of uncomfortable.

Also, I wasn’t convinced by the radio competition. Two weeks of being on the radio every night, getting so many questions fired at you, seems like far too complicated a challenge for just a simple holiday. I don’t listen to that much radio these days but it seems like an awful lot of effort!

Rating: 3 / 5