What I found bizarre about this book was that I hated the
writing style for the majority of the novel, it was written in present tense as
if someone is watching from the sidelines (so you feel very removed from the
situation). Although it proved very effective in the emotional heart-wrenching sections of the novel, it made the flow of the
novel very stilted and it took me a while to get involved in the novel. But
most bizarre was that Suzuma's handle of the language is amazing and so whilst hating
the way she writes it I love what she writes! Needless to say I was experiencing pretty conflicting emotions as I read this book!
The plot itself was simple but extremely effective, poignant
and captivating. Matheo is tipped to
represent Britain in the Olympics next year, he is a world class diver,
extremely young and talented, he has an amazing girlfriend, a popular life in
school with supportive, rich and smart friends. He has it all until something happens the night
after he wins the Nationals and suddenly his perfect world seems full of cracks
and Matheo is spiralling downwards into madness, depression and fear. Matheo is
now hiding a secret so terrible it could destroy everything, but by keeping it
hidden it, in turn, is destroying him.
Revealing his secret would ruin the essence of the novel,
Suzuma builds the tension and hypersensitive emotional situation around the
hidden secret, the fact the reader is always guessing, and when it is revealed
it creates a emotional rollercoaster that left me in tears. And so it is an
adventure, a ride, each reader must take for themselves as unaware of what will
happen as Matheo himself, as otherwise it will end in an anticlimax; and Suzuma
specialises in bringing the novel to a teetering pinpoint of emotions, as the
world as we saw it, as events we hear of and don't dare dwell on, crumbles and
we are forced into someone else's shoes and we realise that shame, guilt, fear
is so wrongly present in the victims when they are really not to blame, yet
they cannot believe they are not responsible for what has happened to them.
Suzuma expertly portrays a troubling issue with a
sensitivity that stresses the cruel, destructive, violating nature of the
secret poor Matheo is hiding because of fear and shame. I will definitely revisit Hurt as it is a book I think that will get better on a second read
though there's no denying it was a whirlwind of emotions even on this first
read. Hurt gets a conflicted 5 out of
5, I couldn't decide whether the halting narrative would mean it deserves a 4
but I think on the whole it was a pretty stunning book of gigantic emotional
dimensions!
It's published by Bodley Head, a division of Random House
Childrens Book UK and can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk for £9.09 (hardback) and
£8.54 (Kindle).
En Bon Lu! SWMLT.
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