Reading your way to language (part 3)

The third novel that I am going to review here is "Step By Wicked Step" by Anne Fine.

This novel is designated for form five students who are studying in Selangor,Kuala Lumpur,Putrajaya, Negeri Sembilan and Malacca. This novel is quiet unique because it follows the stories of different persona. At the beginning of the novel, we are introduced to five different characters that do not seem to have connection with each other. Claudia, Pixie, Robbo, Ralph and Colin are five students from Mordanger School. When they are staying in a "haunted" house, they found a secret passage that leads them to an old diary written by a person named Richard Clayton Harwick. They read the diary and suddenly realized how close their situation is with Richard's. Each of the school children began to tell their life story and how similar their experience is. This is where the novel developed into five different chapters with different stories for each of the children. What is the fate that had befallen to Richard? In what way are the children similar to Richard? All of these and more are available in the novel.

This novel is quite unique because it has nesting stories. The stories are told inside a story. Readers of this novel could at least relate to at least some part of the story. Apart from that, some of the stories by the children do not have any real resolution. This allows the reader to develop their own hypothesis on what would happen in the end. It also allows the readers to realize that a life story may not always have a good ending, but that does not mean we cannot cherish it. All in all, this is an interesting novel that contains several short stories weaven through simple plot. For those who are interested in the ideas behind this novel, you can view the note here.

Well, that's all. See you again in another post.