Nicole Abadie

There's humour, there's pathos.

And one of the enduring themes throughout the book is

Eli trying to work out what it takes to be a good man, and who is a good man, and who isn't a good man, and can you be a mix of both?

And he ultimately learns that really being good is a choice that you make, and we all have that choice.

So it's a really deep and profound book, but it's also funny and poignant as well.

I did.

I liked it very much.

And I hadn't read the earlier two.

Yeah, I'm glad that you mentioned that, Kate.

There are real parallels between Boy Swallows Universe, particularly in Bridge of Clay by Marcus Zusak.

There are superficial similarities.

They're both set in the 80s.

They're both about brothers.

difficult sort of family relationships.

But what I loved about them is that at the heart of both of those books, there is family love.

And in particular, there's a young teenage boy who really, really loves his mum.

Bridge of Clay is the tragic book.

I won't be giving anything away because it's on the back cover that the book is about a family of five boys whose mother dies when they're all still teenagers and his father then deserts them, leaving them to bring themselves up.

And it's narrated by the oldest brother, though it focuses a lot on Clay, the fourth brother.

But what I really loved about this that I also loved in Boy Swallows Universe is