Apples - Richard Milward

I was recommended this book by a fellow student in a creative writing class, and although I thought the idea - a modern day Adam and Eve - was a bit clichéd, I still picked it up as it sounded interesting. This Adam and Eve are teenagers in Middlesbrough. Eve plans to be a glamour model when she's older and spends her weekends taking drugs and having sex, trying to take her mind off her mum's lung cancer. Adam is an obsessive compulsive who falls for Eve but is a very different kind of person, and expects more from Eve than she turns out to be. Having read it, I have mixed feelings about this book. Adam and Eve are characterised very well, and were realistic ...  Read the complete review

I loved this book from start to finish. It's shocking, dramatic and lots of other things as well but one thing is certain it is realistic. I've worked in the area the book is set and knew the school mentioned quite well, and it is accurate narrative from my experiences. In fact, if you were to go to any area of high deprivation and poverty in the UK and you'd be greeted with similar scenarios. Okay, enough about the setting. Move on to the characters. Adam and Eve are truly brilliant and how good to link it to the bibical references from the Garden of Eden. However in this case Eden is not all its cracked up to be. At no point did I feel that Richard Milward ...  Read the complete review