Review: The Girl with the Bomb Inside

Title: The Girl with the Bomb Inside
Author: Andy Conway
Nationality: British
Year: 2010
Publisher: Self-published
Length: Novella
Rating: 5/10
Summary: Lacking that special something

The outline

It’s 1981 and on a run-down council estate 15-year-old Tony is trying to come to terms with life, death and the news that his girlfriend is pregnant.

Sample

There's some good books in the school library, actually. No one reads them. I never look at them either, that'd be dead stupid. I just nick a few now and then. No one notices. The worst thing about nicking books from the school library is you have to take something really shite when your mates are there, otherwise they think you're a spastic. So, if you want a decent book you have to wait till there's no teacher and no kids either. This doesn't happen much, so you just have to risk it sometimes. It's safer when there's a teacher but no kids, to be honest. I've nicked a few like that. I could just borrow them like normal, but I don't want anyone to find out I think.

The verdict

There’s a very good concept at the heart of The Girl with the Bomb Inside, a novella that takes the form of the literary ramblings of a 15-year-old who plans suicide when he discovers his short-term girlfriend is pregnant. His quest to make sense of life, the false starts of his ‘novel’ and his attempts to separate fact and fiction are the perfect canvas for an author to really explore this unfortunate character. However, for me there was something missing, a spark, a flash of genius, something that would have made this story stand out from the crowd.

Swearing alone doesn’t make a story gritty. Neither do references to punk music. What it really needed more was more edge, more danger. I never cared too much what happened next and although the experimental idea at the centre of the novella was good, it wasn’t enough on its own to carry the story for me.