Nobody Saw No One by Steve Tasane
Sep. 19th, 2015 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quippeThe Blurb On The Back:
North London – a gang of identity thieves up the Seven Sisters Road … a “family” of boys long ago lost in the system.
Angel-faced Alfi Spar has fled Tenderness House Secure Unit and come to London to disappear, eating from bins and sleeping in skips, until his old mate, Citizen Digit, offers him a roof.
But their past at Tenderness House is not ready to release them; the boys saw something nobody should see, and the badness is coming after them.
TELL IT. TELL ALL.
Alfi Spar was abandoned as a baby in the doorway of a supermarket. Having spent his life in care, shunted from one foster home to another, he ends up at Tenderness House, a secure unit run managed by Governor Norman Newton. There Alfi’s honesty and naivety gets him a reputation as a grass and a big mouth. His only ally is Citizen Digit, a habitual thief, conman and liar who decides to take him under his wing.
When Citizen Digit stumbles on Tenderness House’s hideous secret, he knows that no one will believe him so he trusts Alfi with the evidence and flees to London where he gets a new life working for Mr Virus, stealing identities and anything else that takes his fancy. The last thing Digit expects is to run into Alfi but he feels obliged to help and that’s where his problems begin – because someone is looking for Alfi Spar and they’ll do anything to get him …
Steve Tasane’s YA retelling of OLIVER TWIST re-imagines the classic story for a post-Jimmy Savile age to mixed effect. The conspiracy elements of the story rang very true for me with Tasane showing the ramifications of sexual abuse for its victims (particularly Grace, who swaps one type of exploitation for another), the refusal of those in authority to believe victims because of their “criminality” and how this allows pedophile groups to exist and operate at the highest levels of society (all of which, unfortunately, remains very topical). Unfortunately, Alfi was too much of an ingénue for me given his background – the sweet innocence that worked for Oliver Twist simply didn’t seem believable here and Alfi’s continued naivety given everything that happens to him made me wonder if he had special educational needs. Citizen Digit’s cynicism and world wariness was more credible, but he’s let down by a highly stylized dialogue style, which I think is a Marmite thing as it clearly works for some readers, but for me the references were quite obscure and not something I’d expect a teenager to say. I also wished that Mr Virus and Jackson got more page time so they could develop into more three-dimensional characters. That said there are some good twists and I enjoyed the cyber crime elements and although this book didn’t quite work for me, it’s still worth a read and I would check out Tasane’s other work.
The Verdict:
Steve Tasane’s YA retelling of OLIVER TWIST re-imagines the classic story for a post-Jimmy Savile age to mixed effect. The conspiracy elements of the story rang very true for me with Tasane showing the ramifications of sexual abuse for its victims (particularly Grace, who swaps one type of exploitation for another), the refusal of those in authority to believe victims because of their “criminality” and how this allows pedophile groups to exist and operate at the highest levels of society (all of which, unfortunately, remains very topical). Unfortunately, Alfi was too much of an ingénue for me given his background – the sweet innocence that worked for Oliver Twist simply didn’t seem believable here and Alfi’s continued naivety given everything that happens to him made me wonder if he had special educational needs. Citizen Digit’s cynicism and world wariness was more credible, but he’s let down by a highly stylized dialogue style, which I think is a Marmite thing as it clearly works for some readers, but for me the references were quite obscure and not something I’d expect a teenager to say. I also wished that Mr Virus and Jackson got more page time so they could develop into more three-dimensional characters. That said there are some good twists and I enjoyed the cyber crime elements and although this book didn’t quite work for me, it’s still worth a read and I would check out Tasane’s other work.
NOBODY SAW NO ONE was released in the United Kingdom on 4th June 2015. Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
North London – a gang of identity thieves up the Seven Sisters Road … a “family” of boys long ago lost in the system.
Angel-faced Alfi Spar has fled Tenderness House Secure Unit and come to London to disappear, eating from bins and sleeping in skips, until his old mate, Citizen Digit, offers him a roof.
But their past at Tenderness House is not ready to release them; the boys saw something nobody should see, and the badness is coming after them.
Alfi Spar was abandoned as a baby in the doorway of a supermarket. Having spent his life in care, shunted from one foster home to another, he ends up at Tenderness House, a secure unit run managed by Governor Norman Newton. There Alfi’s honesty and naivety gets him a reputation as a grass and a big mouth. His only ally is Citizen Digit, a habitual thief, conman and liar who decides to take him under his wing.
When Citizen Digit stumbles on Tenderness House’s hideous secret, he knows that no one will believe him so he trusts Alfi with the evidence and flees to London where he gets a new life working for Mr Virus, stealing identities and anything else that takes his fancy. The last thing Digit expects is to run into Alfi but he feels obliged to help and that’s where his problems begin – because someone is looking for Alfi Spar and they’ll do anything to get him …
Steve Tasane’s YA retelling of OLIVER TWIST re-imagines the classic story for a post-Jimmy Savile age to mixed effect. The conspiracy elements of the story rang very true for me with Tasane showing the ramifications of sexual abuse for its victims (particularly Grace, who swaps one type of exploitation for another), the refusal of those in authority to believe victims because of their “criminality” and how this allows pedophile groups to exist and operate at the highest levels of society (all of which, unfortunately, remains very topical). Unfortunately, Alfi was too much of an ingénue for me given his background – the sweet innocence that worked for Oliver Twist simply didn’t seem believable here and Alfi’s continued naivety given everything that happens to him made me wonder if he had special educational needs. Citizen Digit’s cynicism and world wariness was more credible, but he’s let down by a highly stylized dialogue style, which I think is a Marmite thing as it clearly works for some readers, but for me the references were quite obscure and not something I’d expect a teenager to say. I also wished that Mr Virus and Jackson got more page time so they could develop into more three-dimensional characters. That said there are some good twists and I enjoyed the cyber crime elements and although this book didn’t quite work for me, it’s still worth a read and I would check out Tasane’s other work.
The Verdict:
Steve Tasane’s YA retelling of OLIVER TWIST re-imagines the classic story for a post-Jimmy Savile age to mixed effect. The conspiracy elements of the story rang very true for me with Tasane showing the ramifications of sexual abuse for its victims (particularly Grace, who swaps one type of exploitation for another), the refusal of those in authority to believe victims because of their “criminality” and how this allows pedophile groups to exist and operate at the highest levels of society (all of which, unfortunately, remains very topical). Unfortunately, Alfi was too much of an ingénue for me given his background – the sweet innocence that worked for Oliver Twist simply didn’t seem believable here and Alfi’s continued naivety given everything that happens to him made me wonder if he had special educational needs. Citizen Digit’s cynicism and world wariness was more credible, but he’s let down by a highly stylized dialogue style, which I think is a Marmite thing as it clearly works for some readers, but for me the references were quite obscure and not something I’d expect a teenager to say. I also wished that Mr Virus and Jackson got more page time so they could develop into more three-dimensional characters. That said there are some good twists and I enjoyed the cyber crime elements and although this book didn’t quite work for me, it’s still worth a read and I would check out Tasane’s other work.
NOBODY SAW NO ONE was released in the United Kingdom on 4th June 2015. Thanks to Walker Books for the review copy of this book.
