The 10PM Question

Frankie’s an apparently sensible, talented Year 8 student, but the drumbeat of questions is gaining volume in his head: Are the smoke alarm batteries flat? Does the cat, and therefore the rest of the family, have worms? Will bird flu strike and ruin life as we know it? Is the kidney-shaped spot on his chest actually a galloping cancer?

Most of the significant people in Frankie’s world – father, brother, sister, great-aunts, best friend Gigs – seem gloriously untroubled by worry. Only Ma takes seriously his catalogue of persistent anxieties; only Ma listens patiently to his 10 p.m. queries. But, of course, it is Ma who is the cause of the most worrying question of all, the one that Frankie can never even bring himself to ask.

Frankie’s friendship with Sydney, and Sydney’s relationship with her own mother, begins the unravelling of his carefully controlled world, and pushes Frankie and his family to front up to the ultimate 10 p.m. question.

The 10PM Question is a novel which defies all age categories. It does so with a sparkling wit and an operatic cast of characters so delightful and maddening they become dear to us