Reviews: (by author)

Bowler, Tim. Midget. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000 (paperback). ISBN 0-689-82909-4. $8

Bowler is the winner of England's Carnegie Medal for River Boy, which I will read. Midget, however, though extremely well written, is painful to read because of its subject-the torture of a handicapped boy who, unable to speak or write, cannot do anything to protect himself. Midget, the name he's called by his brutal older brother, is fully mental capable and much of the horror of this book lies in his inability to communicate to anyone what is really happening to him. Everyone is convinced of his older brother's devotion to him and only through an unconvincing sudden discovery of a special capacity to visualize things that then happen does this sorry child get the better of his brother. But no good comes of his revenge. Here the power of the author over his material becomes so clear; Bowler could have ended the book differently. While I don't hold out for happy endings, this resolution is especially bleak.

A. Allison

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