Wednesday, May 6, 2020

Nasty by Michael Rosen





2009
The narrator meets a fascinating old woman who tell him stories of a giant flea on the Bakerloo line, a swarm of killer wasps, a do-it-yourself pedestrian crossing and lollipop lady, a gruesome way of killing mice, a burger supplier who uses dubious meat, a judgement worthy of King Solomon about the parentage of a baby and a strange encounter with a grizzly bear. But is she telling the truth? She has the geography of the Bakerloo line a little wrong. There is no grizzly bear called Maureen at the zoo.    
      
The story is told by an adult who visits friends late at night and has take-away meals. He doesn’t hesitate in informing us that the woman with the amazing stories has twin nieces who fell in love with the same man who impregnated both of them and then abandoned them.  
The book has a respectable spine though it is thinner than many for this reader. No concession has been made to the new reader in terms of language. The text is as dense as we would expect for a fluent reader.  The font has a serif and difficult ‘a’s and ‘g’s.  The text is single-spaced and blocked.  It has just 109 pages. It includes some quirky pictures that are mainly decorative.       

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