Review: INFINITE SKY by C.J. Flood

3.79 STARS from 462 GoodReaders

You can't tell that the coffin holds the body of a boy. 

He wasn't even sixteen, but his coffin's the same size as a man's would be.

It's not just that he was young, bu because it was so sudden. No one should die the way he did: that's what the faces here say.

I think about him, in there, with all that space, and I want to stop them. I want to open the box and limb in with him. To wrap him up in a duvet. I can't bear the thought of him being cold.

And all the time the same question flails around my head, like a hawk moth round a lightbulb. Is it possible to keep loving somebody when they kill someone you love?

This is the prologue to CJ Flood's INFINITE SKY.  The narrative by thirteen year-old Iris Dancy gives readers the bitter sweet story of young love. A forbidden love that ends in murder.

------------------------------------------------------------------
Review: CHASING SHADOWS
Review: REALITY BOY
Review: FANGIRL  (light-hearted drama)
------------------------------------------------------------------

BACKSTORY

The Dancy family is self destructing.  Iris' mother upped and left. In her absence the household routine has ceased. Meals are haphazard and the house is a mess. Iris and her brother, Sam, struggle with their feelings of abandonment.  And their friends and father don't make the situation better. Mr. Dancy is drinking heavily, so when Gypsies move onto their property, it's possible for anything to happen. Even love. Even death.

It was three months after Mum left that the Gypsies moved in. They set up camp in the paddock one Sunday night while we were asleep.  My brother Sam was excited when he saw them.

"Gypos!" he shouted.

Sam used to have a Gypsy in his class: Grace Fitzpatrick. She'd been famous at school because she could do as many things with her feet as with her hands. She could even write her name with them, which was funny because she couldn't read. Sam, who'd sat next to her in assembly, said she smelled like cat piss and fire smoke.

The prolog sets the stage of INFINITE SKY.  As the book unfolds the reader is left wondering who was killed and how.  Is it Sam?  Is it the gypsy boy, Trick? 

The story is bitter-sweet and many of my friends loved it. To be truthful though it wasn't for me. The writing was excellent, but I just couldn't connect with Iris.  But don't keep you from investigating this debut novel.  

http://www.telegraph.co.uk  review

amazon reviews

theguardian.com review

Pam~


INFINITE SKY
by C.J. Flood

Reading Information:
Page Count: 256
no reading information currently available
--sample pages and reviews available