Guardian Unlimited Books | Review | Review: Framed by Frank Cottrell Boyce
Philip Ardagh considers Frank Cottrell Boyce's second novel for children, Framed, marks him out as a 'true master':
There's a nice twist in a subplot at the end and it's all very satisfying, but it's the characters that make you read this book. I don't know how hard Frank Cottrell Boyce finds it to write, but he makes it seem easy, which is the mark of a true master.
In the same Guardian Review section Diane Samuels reviews The Witch's Boy
by Michael Gruber:
The writing can sometimes be a little overblown, but it also captures the tone of traditional fairytale narration, while touching it with a contemporary voice. This is a rich and imaginative book which undertakes in literary terms what the author describes as the work of his grey-eyed woman - to adjust "the pattern of things so that life flowed smoothly through time, the sun becoming the sunflower seed and the sunflower seed becoming the mouse ... round and round, ever changing, the patterns crisp and balanced as they danced to the unknowable tune".
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