Ian Bone (1)Critiques

Filomena sonhadora - é assim que seu amigo George a chama... Imagine se desse para desenhar os sonhos com uma caneta mágica. O que você desenharia? Um lindo cavalo negro? Um tapete mágico? Ou melhor, você se transformaria em professora? Daí poderia dar ordens para a turma toda! Ah, se os sonhos se tornassem realidade...

Michael Tonkin, seventeen, is just 'hanging' at school until one day he unleashes the demons at a friendly soccer match when he nearly strangles Ahmad, a Lebanese boy from the opposition team. Everything starts to close-in - guilt, fear, Ahmad's crew - until it ends on a lonely highway with Michael bashed and broken by the side of the road. With his memory partially lost, what is left of Michael now? How will he rebuild himself into a man? Michael struggles to remember the truth, to put himself back together. He turns to the men in his life - his father, a Vietnam War veteran, and his uncle, a brilliant drunk. Michael must choose if he wants to be a player in the 'game', where hatred, fear and anger shape the lives of those around him. He must choose if he wants to be a Tin Soldier.

Freda is trapped in a siege for 36 hours when she is 9 years old. Gradually she starts to identify with the gunman and enjoys holding his gun. The siege ends when Freda encourages the gunman to kill one of the hostages.
It is now 10 years later. Freda is forced to face her part in the siege when she is approached by another hostage who was also a child at the time.

Not a gripping story. Quite slow moving

Jockey is the crim who has just come out from a stint in a juvenile detention centre; he is hero worshipped by Alex, a disenchanted kid from a twice broken home who for undisclosed reasons is a low achiever, barely able to read in high school. He is picked on at school but deals with it, indeed encourages it, by being a lippy smart aleck. Alex’s incongruous friend is Marta, strictly parented, Christian, bright; but rescued from being a goody-goody by her behaviour as the story unfolds and she becomes the most appealing of the characters.

Before Jockey was sentenced for bashing a police officer he was involved in a peer mentoring program to help Alex learn to read, although instead, he led him further astray. When he is released Alex seems scared, and we soon find out that he was in part responsible for Jockey’s arrest but does not know if Jockey is aware of this. Jockey takes Alex under his wing again and promises to toughen him up by taking him out into the wild territory, on the other side of the law, for a rough night out.

16-year-old Susan Bennett returns home after being booted from boarding school. She takes her overweight brother, whom she's nicknamed "Neat," to the Theater of Possibility, where audience members can write down their wishes and performers act them out. Neat, the subject of their father's award-winning book, The Silent Boy, breaks years of silence (he stopped talking on Susan's eighth birthday) to tell Susan that his wish is to save the world.

With the help of Todd, a performer they meet at the theatre, Neat lands a spot on community TV. But while the "fat Buddha" can reach strangers, there are still problems at home, like the battle that's raged between Susan and her dad since Neat stopped talking. The story alternates between Susan, Neat and Todd's perspectives (and with occasional excerpts from The Silent Boy). Readers will connect with each of the characters' complicated points of view, from Susan's anger toward her father, whom she felt used her brother for his own fame, to Neat's innocent longing to devour the pain he sees in others including their father's feelings of loss when his son stopped speaking.

Fairly unbelievable and not convincing.

this is a book for people who love suspence, realistic people, and like ends that shock them. a greaat read and people will find it hard to put this book down

Blood on the microphone is a very good book; it keeps you guessing about what is going to happen in the next chapter.
I'd give this book 5 stars (:

Psychological drama about a girl who (with others) was held hostage at 9 years of age. At 19 she examines her feelings and actions then and since during the seige A bit lengthy in the middle, but worth reading to the resolution½

Yr. 9 - Yr. 12.
When Freda is nine, she unwittingly walks into the middle of a violent siege in a fast-food restaurant. Separated from her parents, imprisoned with a group of strangers for a seemly endless period, Freda begins to identify with the only man who has shown her any kindness - the gunman. Ten years later, Freda is haunted by the events that culminated in tragedy in the restaurant.

10 years after being held hostage in a fast food restaurant, 19 year old Freda Opperman is interviewed about her experience. Bone writes a creative story, moving between the present day and Freda's memory of the event, keeping the tension taut.

Nine year-old Freda Opperman is caught up in a restaurant siege without her parents. For two days she is bullied and harangued by a madman with a gun. Now, ten years later, the choices she made to survive are coming back to haunt her. What is the burden of the innocent bystander? What happened in the lost hours of that restaurant? Only three people knew for sure, and two of them are dead. Left with the legacy of the dying words of one of the hostages to ‘lead a good life’, the truth slowly comes back to Freda. Is remembering a release, or a burden in itself?

What choices did you make, Freda? How did you come out alive?
- www.ianbone.com.au

This book opens with the central character Alex deliberately giving “cheek” to the senior boys at school and then getting his head “dunked” in the boys toilet for it! Alex then discovers that the whole process has been watched by “The Jockey” an older boy who has just spent a year in juvenile prison because Alex told his father about a robbery that the jockey was about to commit and a policeman was badly injured when they tried to arrest him. The Jockey doesn’t know it was Alex that dobbed and suggests that he and Alex head to the city to “rough” it with only the Jockey to protect them. Or does he know and Alex is walking into a terrible trap?
Scene where Alex goes to get his jacket back from an old drunk who stole it from him at the cemetery and the drunk supposedly falls to his death off a water tower

Mac promises at the start of the novel that it won’t be “one of those dying mother stories” when his Mum is diagnosed with cancer and the family has to cope with the upheaval of chemotherapy and their own fears. Mac is a joker, who doesn’t take life too seriously until he befriends Killer Kusinski (the toughest girl in the school who has a reputation for having hit a teacher) and discovers that there is more to the world than his own petty wants and needs. A great book where the main character isn’t perfect and has to work through his faults and fears. At times funny and at other times very touching.When Mac promises his Mum that together they will swim with the dolphins – he is scared – can’t swim and wants to get out of his promise. P.28 –33. up to “mention of it.”

Story of the aftermath of a restaurant hostage situation as seen through the eyes of a little girl who bonded with the gunman. Interesting, but a little too "out there" with how the girl, Freda, acted in her grown up life.