132,566
edits
Changes
From TheBookbag
Jump to navigationJump to searchMay Contain Nuts (The World of Norm) by Jonathan Meres (view source)
Revision as of 07:23, 25 December 2011
, 07:23, 25 December 2011no edit summary
So expertly do we see that moaning from Norm's point of view that it's easy to forget this is a third-person narrative. You're with him all the way, feeling all of the emotions, seeing all his ineptitude and indignity. The target audience might well not be reading this but looking in a mirror.
The benefit of this is to distance it from books such as [[:Category:Jeff Kinney|the Wimpy Kid books]], although there are several differences, not just in narrator. This is British and while still managing to be universal, definitely feels English. (Do Americans say 'flipping' as a swear word ''so'' often? I think not.) The illustrations are uncaptioned small pictures, or animated fonts to enliven the dialogue even further. They don't capture beats away from the story, as the Simpsons-style inserts of Wimpy Kid, they just flash quite literally the gist of the story. I loved the broccoli being airmailed to Africa's starving, as per the parent's regular impetus to eat one's greens.
On the whole it's not quite as funny as it thinks it is - to me at my age, at least. It's a little cheap in borrowing Norm's grammar at times when more decent English could be used. For a style that utilizes ''italics'' to stress so much so often (nearly once a page) it's unfortunate the font shows that emphasis so poorly. But it is a very good, and ever-welcome first title in this series. It's self-contained, it's suitably knowing, and is on the whole witty enough to make this a series to watch.
