When they notice the boys, it is more with confusion or pity than with any fawning admiration, as if they aren’t just separate genders but distinct species. The girls talk and sit, either on benches or on the grass, in groups of three or four. The boys are active, playing football or keepie-uppie, or engaged in mock or genuine fights, dead-arming each other or swinging each other around by their bags. “At lunch break, out on the yard, the pupils of Rosewood Upper are divided, subconsciously, according to gender. He has teenagers down to a tee, and this was never more obvious than in this delightful paragraph:

One of Matt Haig’s strengths has always been characterization and his work always shows a sharp observational eye. But although there are serious issues explored most of the time Haig is simply having fun, never more so than when listing the famous vampires that have made their mark on history: Jimi Hendrix, Byron, The Rolling Stones and funniest of all, Billy Ocean. The narrative provides a cutting commentary on middle England, and of how keeping up appearances can be held as more important than the enjoyment of life itself. Using short, sharp paragraphs and sprinkled with delightful asides from the fictional Abstainer’s Handbook, The Radleys is a coming of age story that will appeal to adults, both young and old. The Radleys is a refreshing and original take on a vampire genre that has arguably become rather overworked of late, and the book’s main theme of abstinence is perfect for these debt-ridden times. But as their children have yet to find out, the Radleys have a devastating secret they are, in fact, a family of abstaining vampires. They are an everyday family, averagely dysfunctional, averagely content. Peter, Helen and their teenage children, Clara and Rowan, live in an English town. Read our review of Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link Matt Haig, winner of the Nestle Children’s Book Prize Gold Award for his children’s novel Shadow Forest, has written his latest book The Radleys specifically for this enterprise, with the title falling in alongside Pretty Monsters by Kelly Link and Life of Pi by Yann Martel. Independent publishers Walker Books and Canongate have launched a co-publishing venture aimed at producing bestselling, award-winning books for the next generation of adult readers.

The radleys by matt haig