Age 9-13

This novel purports to be put together from fragments of manuscript found rolled up inside a wooden leg. It is partly the narrative of young Ludlow Fitch, who escapes from his abusive parents when they try to have his teeth ripped out for money by clutching onto the back of a carriage that takes him from the Dickensian city to a country village. At the same time, another newcomer arrives there, a “secret pawnbroker” who sets up shop giving people money in exchange for their guilty secrets. This frees them from crippling debts that keep them in the power of a greedy local tyrant. But, rather as in Joanne Harris’s novel Chocolat, there is a backlash against the redemptive stranger even as he liberates the community. Partly composed of the tales that Ludlow, as the pawnbroker’s assistant, records in the Black Book of Secrets, this clever, atmospheric debut, about kindness and cruelty, with its richly drawn and sometimes grotesque characters, its mysteries, its magic and its surprising climax, is a piece of perfectly constructed, old-fashioned storytelling of the most compelling kind

(Macmillan £8.99). NJ

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