Inventing Elliot » (Reprint)

GRAHAM GARDNER is an academic researcher and author, specializing in social and political geography, at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Prior to this he has had many jobs, including shop assistant, civil servant, research officer, waiter, and factory worker. He is also a keen musician, playing rock and classical piano. He is the second eldest of ten children, and was born and brought up in Worcestershire. He divides his time between his flat in Aberystwyth and his parents' house in the Malvern Hills. INVENTING ELLIOT is his first novel.

Elliot's life has been spinning out of control. He would give anything to get back to normal. Now, at his new school, he has a chance to reinvent himself. He will make himself so cook, so out of reach, that no one will hurt him ever again. The plan succeeds beyond his wildest dreams. And then beyond his wildest nightmare.

Elliot is noticed by the Guardians, the mysterious, manipulative group who run the school according to their own very special rules. They want him to become one of them. For the first time, Elliot has power. But power comes at a terrible price, and Elliot faces an impossible choice when he has to decide how to use it.

GRAHAM GARDNER is an academic researcher and author, specializing in social and political geography, at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. Prior to this he has had many jobs, including shop assistant, civil servant, research officer, waiter, and factory worker. He is also a keen musician, playing rock and classical piano. He is the second eldest of ten children, and was born and brought up in Worcestershire. He divides his time between his flat in Aberystwyth and his parents' house in the Malvern Hills. INVENTING ELLIOT is his first novel.

Publishers Weekly

Like a diluted version of The Chocolate War, this British novel concerns a freshman boy singled out by a secret society of upperclassmen who reign over the students at Holminster High. Elliot arrives at the school with numerous strikes against him: his father is clinically depressed, his mother works at two menial jobs to keep them in their ramshackle apartment, his uniform is second-hand, and Elliot himself is trying to work his way out of his role as perpetual victim at his previous school. To his surprise, the elite group, the Guardians, express an interest in him, not to dunk his head in a toilet but rather to recruit him as one of their successors. The book moves along too predictable an arc, fueled by cardboard characterizations. Tutored by the Guardians, who are obsessed with George Orwell's 1984 and the fantasies of power it has inspired in them, Elliot comes to power, but simultaneously (and secretly) befriends one of the Guardians' most prominent victims, remembering what it was like to be on the receiving end of cruelty. The clearly foreseeable act of redemption at the end undermines the story's credibility. Ages 12-up. (Mar.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.