Mitchell appears to get the voice of a twelve year-old going on thirteen down pretty well as he interacts with his family and friends. The setting is in England but the family life and the boyhood games of the 1980’s is comfortably relayed.
The only thing that has bothered me so far is the amount of names that are thrown out in the first few pages, each character being given quite a bit of space so that it’s hard to pick out who’s important to follow and remember or, if all of them, to remember who and what they are.
I don’t expect the writing to be of the eloquence that I’ve just experienced from William Gay, and it would be out of place here, mainly because of the protagonist being who he is. I’m finding myself putting the novel down more frequently, but I’m going to try to put some straight time into it tomorrow.
The Lost Children: A Charity Anthology