Happy to be able to include this engrossing, tilting novel in the September instalment of Novel Encounters, my regular column highlighting the month’s most anticipated fiction for the Books section of Zoomer magazine. (see column and mini-review at link)

I felt compellingly wrongfooted throughout Black Dove: Particularly early on, I rarely understood what was meant to be actually happening to the characters and what was in-novel storytelling — but every time I lost my footing, author Colin McAdam presented a fingerhold with just enough meaning for me to grasp and carry on. Focussed primarily on a sad twelve-year-old boy (and his well-meaning writer father), this is no Early Reader coming-of-age novel: With monsters and bullies and abusive parents, the storyline can be bloody and gruesome. But still, the uncertainty and danger and sadness of this narrative perfectly captures something of what it is to be twelve; what it is to be the parent of a sad twelve-year-old boy, trying (maybe not successfully) to prove you understand him; that you remember what it’s like to stand at that cliffedge. The language is vivid and slightly off somehow (but compellingly so; I needed to make meaning), the plot is fantastical but rooted in the muck of our own world, and the characters are like to break one’s heart: What more could a reader possibly ask for? I went into this not knowing anything about the plot and I’d urge other readers to do the same with the assurance that it all comes together in the end.