How Many Lives Has Scuffo?
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Please... Call Me Derek
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Was Alexander a villain? An injured hero, having survived WW1, dies, unexpectedly, in Glasgow leaving a shameful secret. This six generation mystery starts when Tom visits the loft “looking for the ‘jeely pan’…”
Max is a mouse with many issues.
Max is a mouse with issues.
The question is – is he going to be able to use them?
In a whimsical departure from his successful Sweaty (Children) and Derek (Young Adult) series, Mac Black brings us a quirky new character called Maximillian – a resourceful mouse, with some surprising ideas. This is Book Two in the series – you will find Book One here
Becoming a cat was a surprise to the Reverend Harold Scuffington! From the moment we meet Harold, we can see the immense complications to a man’s life that changing into a cat can bring… especially if it is a cat like Scuffo… If he isn’t under a bed, he is in it and what he sees, hears and experiences will change Harold’s life forever!
Max is a mouse with issues.
Trying to fit in with everyone around him means that Max can’t be himself – in fact, it is downright dangerous being himself – so if he is to carry on living with the horrible cat, Camilla, and Mrs McSkimming, he needs to change himself into someone else…
The question is – is he going to be comfortable with the result?
Book Three in the Sweaty Series Features stories about Derek with his gang in the eighties, quirkily illustrated (by Mac Black), the stories build on Derek’s ability to find disasters and get himself into one mess after another, this time with or without a camera. Sweaty’s tales are about little kids enjoying life, before smartphones and computer games came along. Of course, it is just possible – if you are older than five – that you did all these things yourself…
Features stories about Derek with his gang in the eighties, quirkily illustrated (by Mac Black), the stories build on Derek’s ability to find disasters and get himself into one mess after another. Sweaty’s tales are about little kids enjoying life, before smartphones and computer games came along. Of course, it is just possible – if you are older than five – that you did all these things yourself…
The question has to be asked: was Alexander really a villain? It is worthy of note that Alexander Findlay, one of the few Scottish pipers to survive the horrors of the Great War, returned from the battlefields as an injured hero. After that ordeal, shouldn’t life have become kinder to him? Admittedly, straying from the straight and narrow was wrong, but his untimely death shortly afterwards in the centre of Glasgow seems so unfair: and his legacy? He may have been a hero, but his ill-gotten gains became a shameful family secret. Are the Findlays up for a challenge ‘from the grave’? Will there really be a worthwhile prize? The story involving six generations of the Findlay family gradually unfolds when Tom visits the loft “looking for the ‘jeely pan’…”
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Becoming a cat was a surprise to the Reverend Harold Scuffington! From the moment we meet Harold, we can see the immense complications to a man’s life that changing into a cat can bring… especially if it is a cat like Scuffo… If he isn’t under a bed, he is in it and what he sees, hears and experiences will change Harold’s life forever!
Features stories about Derek with his gang in the eighties, quirkily illustrated (by Mac Black), the stories build on Derek’s ability to find disasters and get himself into one mess after another. Sweaty’s tales are about little kids enjoying life, before smartphones and computer games came along. Of course, it is just possible – if you are older than five – that you did all these things yourself…
Derek travels from child to confused adult, from reporter for the local paper to any job available, doing everything he thinks he should, but doing it his way.
Max is a mouse with issues.
Trying to fit in with everyone around him means that Max can’t be himself – in fact, it is downright dangerous being himself – so if he is to carry on living with the horrible cat, Camilla, and Mrs McSkimming, he needs to change himself into someone else…
The question is – is he going to be comfortable with the result?
Derek has not had much success getting his first great novel started – in fact, the research it requires has nearly cost him his marriage and ruined several pairs of his wife’s tights.
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Ciaran Folan –
Mac Black has woven an intriguing tale out of a visit to the stuff in the loft. Where else in the home has such stories to tell?
There is plenty of humour in the interaction between family members, and also pathos in a few of the other lives in this Scottish family history. So this book can be read on different levels. And the wee village of Aberloudie wraps its dignity round it’s knees. I particularly liked the the pace with which we are led in successive chapters through parallel lives, and it’s intriguing to discover where they lead. Hamish’s marriage failure because his ship riveter’s deafness defies knowing whether he ever really agreed to marry is to me the saddest of the pathos.
Some of the chapters describe tragic wartime events and I found these stories enjoyable, because they are emotional, but in no time you are back among the family banter; a good combination, and very smoothly done. There are some memorable gags, for me, where the pugnacious father first tries negotiation to get rid of the daughter’s boyfriend, whose motives he suspects, by offering him his expensive set of golf clubs, and the lad wants to know if the balls and tees might be included!!