Alice and the Fly

'a darkly quirky story of love, obsession and fear' Anna James

This is a book about phobias and obsessions, isolation and dark corners. It's about families, friendships, and carefully preserved secrets. But above everything else it's about love. Finding love - in any of its forms - and nurturing it.

Miss Hayes has a new theory. She thinks my condition's caused by some traumatic incident from my past I keep deep-rooted in my mind. As soon as I come clean I'll flood out all these tears and it'll all be ok and I won't be scared of Them anymore. The truth is I can't think of any single traumatic childhood incident to tell her. I mean, there are plenty of bad memories - Herb's death, or the time I bit the hole in my tongue, or Finners Island, out on the boat with Sarah - but none of these are what caused the phobia. I've always had it. It's Them. I'm just scared of Them. It's that simple.

(P)2015 Hodder & Stoughton©2015 James Rice

Unique book from a teenager's voice & perspective

First of all, the performance was great especially in places where we needed to hear the actual voice, a good job by Scott Williams who I have not listened to before. However, the story was a mixture of mental illness narrative with a teenager's life. Neither were developed as fully as they could have been leaving the listener/reader filling-in some gaps. I felt like descriptions of other characters were more detailed and developed. Worth a listen though and does provide some insight into mental illness and how it affects a person.