“Where’s Rowan?”

Laurel looked back down at her brother, her expression triumphant as she caught his faraway gaze. Their father sounded grim-really grim-. “Hah, now you’re in for it,” she hissed through the banisters. “You’re in big trouble now, Ro-the-strange.”

Rowan the Strange is set in wartime Britain and there’s something wrong with Rowan. He’s always been odd but when he finally breaks, one Sunday, he breaks three of his sister’s fingers and slices himself with his pocket knife. After that he is moved to an insanity asylum and subjected to electro-convulsive therapy after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. The novel follows the trials and tribulations of a Rowan who suffers some of the same circumstances as normal 13 year-old boys, but they always get a whole lot worse for him when he ‘isn’t in control’. The way that Julie Hearn tells how Rowan is screamed at by his ailment is beautifully told with an impressive inner monologue.

“If he touches your mother,” said the Voice “if his filthy jerry finger lands on the mother’s face she will feel it like a red hot brand. Even miles away, at her typewriter down in the kitchen, she will feel it eating into her flesh and be scarred for the rest of her life.”

The way that Hearn makes the Voice sound like another being, completely separate from him and in no way related, just an onlooker, is a very unique way of looking at schizophrenia in a novel such as this, because it shows what it was really like: the suffering, the tests, the loneliness and especially the fear. It is also well written because Hearn has obviously remembered what the primal fears of a child are and has incorporated this into her books as the Voice which persuades Rowan to do the things he does. She also manages to express not only the fear of the individual but the fear of the family for the individual.

“This is the second time today,” her look said, plain as anything, “it's not good pet. I love you but this is not good.”

To express the fear of both parties related to the events successfully is a major achievement. Above this it is an excellently easy book to keep reading and not put down. This is one of the few books that I have actually managed to read continuously from the beginning for a very long time, which is why I think it deserves to win the Carnegie award.