Young Adult Fiction

To be published August 1^ST 2014

NZ Writer

Joy Cowley Speed of Light  Gecko Press 2014  $19.99pb 202pp  ISBN 978 1 8775 7993 6

Themes:  Dysfunctional families/ Fraud/ Good v. evil/ Mathematics/ Physics/ Wealth/ Weather/ Wellington New Zealand

Jeff is the centre of a truly dysfunctional family. His father is more interested in money than anything else; his older brother is serving time in prison; his mother is unapproachable; his sister is keeping a secret. Jeff takes the only safe way he knows and goes deep into the world of mathematics – a good place where rules are kept, which has no hidden agendas and which speaks the same language all over the world. Then, in the middle of one of Wellington’s worst storms, Jeff meets a strange old woman who seems to have some answers for him. But. The question is. Is she real?

A new title from Joy Cowley is always an event and particularly so for this one that makes the reader stop and question their own beliefs about good and evil.

Sometimes when you finish a book you close it and walk away. Others you hold in your lap, reluctant to let the feelings and emotions it created in you die down. So it was for me with Speed of Light

Recommended.

Year 9 up/ Age 13 up

A Note from Joy Cowley

Speed of Light is a story about tension between light and dark, and how the darkness serves the light. It's a story that confronts our notions that comfort is good and discomfort is evil, whereas the seed of new growth actually lies in the shadows.  

Source: Publisher's blurb