January 2017 NewGen Book of the Month.
Winner of the 2016 Michael L. Printz Award | In a Nutshell: Unconventional magic realist thriller | An entrancingly unique novel about a boy’s search for a young woman who’s disappeared from their eccentric small town.
“Bone Gap had gaps just wide enough for people to slip through, or slip away, leaving only their stories behind”. That’s what the townsfolk of Bone Gap believe, and so none of them are shocked when beautiful Roza vanishes, as mysteriously as she arrived. Well, not quite none of them. Finn is certain that Roza was abducted, snatched by “the man who moves like a cornstalk in the wind”, but since he’s considered “a little weird”, no one believes him. Then, as he searches for Roza, he finds an ally in Petey, who describes herself as looking like a “giant bee”, and reckons Finn is face-blind, only able to recognise the most distinct of faces. As they become close and discover truths about themselves, so light is shone upon Roza’s vanishing.
The sequences with Roza and her captor possess the sublimely sinister atmosphere of fairy tales. “You'll love me one day”, her captor insists, over and over, while extolling her to be the most beautiful woman in the whole world. And perceptions of beauty, and how we interpret what we see, are central to this enthralling genre-defying novel. ~ Joanne Owen
| Primary Genre | Young Adult Fiction |
| Recommendations: |
He'd been drawn here by the grass and the bees and the strange sensation that this was a magical place, that the bones of the world were a little looser here, double-jointed, twisting back on themselves, leaving spaces one could slip into and hide ...Everyone knows Bone Gap is full of gaps - gaps to trip you up, gaps to slide through so you can disappear forever. So when young, beautiful Roza goes missing, the people of Bone Gap aren't surprised. After all, it isn't the first time someone's slipped away and left Finn and Sean O'Sullivan on their own. Finn knows that's not what happened with Roza. He knows she was taken, ripped from the cornfields by a man whose face he can't remember. But no one believes him anymore. Well, almost no one. Petey Willis, the beekeeper's daughter, suspects that lurking behind Finn's fearful shyness is a story worth uncovering. But as we, like Petey, follow the stories of Finn, Roza, and the people of Bone Gap - their melancholy pasts, their terrifying presents, their uncertain futures - the truth about what happened to Roza is slowly revealed. And it is stranger than you can possibly imagine.
Bone Gap features in the following genres: Young Adult Fiction, Books of the Month, Books with reviews by our Reader Review Panel, eBooks of the Month, Children’s, Teenage and Educational, Recommendations
Bone Gap is available in Paperback
Bone Gap was written by Laura Ruby and published by Faber & Faber
Bone Gap has 380 pages
