Reviews: (by author)

Kemp, Gene. Gowie Corby Plays Chicken. London: Faber and Faber, 1980. Available used on Amazon and elsewhere.

I first read this when I was about eleven, the same age as the character of the title. The story, style and characters are all tough, vivid and unsentimental. The main character is a disruptive, bullying loner from a broken home who's let down by everyone except his pet rat and a new girl at school called Rosie, a deeply compassionate African-American who befriends and helps him.

There's a particular bit in the book where Gowie is being caned on the hands by the headmaster for the latest in a long line of misdemeanours, and although the headmaster stops after one lash and dismisses him, sensing that the punishment will make no difference anyway, Gowie asks, "Aren't you going to cane me any more?" The headmaster says, "You want to be caned?" to which he replies, "No, but I don't want not to be." The headmaster continues to thrash him, and when he goes out, he says he was "crying for a lot of things that have nothing to do with having hands that hurt." It was written in 1979 but it's timeless stuff, like all great writing.

Richard Cooper, October 2003

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