Brooks, Kevin
Entry updated 15 April 2024. Tagged: Author.
(1959- ) UK author of Young Adult fiction, most of it nonfantastic, his best-known title being The Bunker Diary (2013), whose young protagonist is imprisoned in an Underground bunker; his torturer adds other prisoners, all of whom eventually die, including, at the very last, the young protagonist. The use of violence in this tale, and in several others, may seem surgical: but at the same time open-eyed.
Brooks is of interest for several tales, some directly sf. Thes title of The Road of the Dead (2006) is the literal road her siblings must carry to its final home the body of their raped and murdered elder sister. In Being (2007), a young man discovers during a medical examination that as far as his inner workings are concerned he is a Cyborg. The young protagonist of iBoy (2010), filmed for Television as iBoy (2017) directed by Adam Randall, awakens from a horrific beating to discover that his iphone has become embedded into his skull, and that he has developed Superpowers. Dogchild (2018) is set in a Near Future Dystopian world broken into two enclaves separated by a wilderness populated by feral Dogs; the enfant sauvage protagonist, having been raised by dogs, must survive as an ostensible human in the far more savage world of a world brought to its knees; the first-person narrative is mildly estranged (see Linguistics). See Through Me (2019) modulates the existential drama of Being (see above) through the story of a young girl whose skin has become transparent, revealing her human (and therefore disgusting) inner organs. She finds a partner who is blind. [JC]
Kevin M Brooks
born Pinhoe, Devon: 30 March 1959
works (highly selected)
- The Road of the Dead (Frome, Somerset: The Chicken House, 2006) [hb/]
- Being (Frome, Somerset: The Chicken House/London: Scholastic, 2007) [hb/]
- iBoy (London: Puffin, 2010) [pb/]
- The Bunker Diary (London: Penguin Books, 2013) [hb/]
- Dogchild (London: Electric Monkey, 2018) [pb/]
- See Through Me (London: Electric Monkey, 2019) [pb/]
links
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