Book Review

Book review: Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer by K M Peyton

Pennington is in his last year of school and hating every moment. He’s an outrageously talented thug: he’s famed for his athletic ability and skill on the piano, but he can barely walk down the street without starting a fight. Penn is the ultimate anti-hero, forever being coerced into doing the right thing (saving his wimpy best friend, rescuing his senile piano teacher) and whenever he actually pulls it off, the credit goes to someone else. But when his arch enemy, the head of senior school forces him out of something he didn’t want to do anyway, Penn’s stubbornness comes to the rescue and wins for him a place outside of gaol.

The writing is superb: it’s filled with dry humour and a gritty realism that draws the reader right in to the character’s head, so that you both laugh at him and sympathise with him. Thoroughly recommended for anyone over 14 with a keen sense of the ridiculous. Five stars.