[LISTENED TO: August 2014] The Unluckiest Boy in the World
My kids enjoy just about any audio book, but I try to find ones that seem funny (and age appropriate for both of them). For reasons I’m unclear about, it seems like most of the audio books that are age appropriate are British or Australian–either they release more audio books, or that’s just what my library orders. So we wind up listening to a lot of British readers (I think my kids can tell a British accent now).
I didn’t know anything about this book (or its author) but the title sounded great and the age was appropriate. We listened to it on our trip to Michigan, and it was a perfect length to fit near the end of our arrival. Boy did we like this book. There are so many funny unexpected moments. And the story has a great sense of companionship and closeness among outcasts. And of course, really bad things happen in inappropriate places, which is quite funny.
I’m really glad I got this book, and I’d be interested to see what else Norriss has written.
So just who is the unluckiest boy in the world? Nicholas Frith is an average boy eleven year old English boy–not really lucky but not really unlucky either. Indeed, nothing interesting ever happens to him. Although he does have an interesting parental setup (which is complicated and best left for the story to reveal, but suffice it to say that his dad is in the United States, but not because he was trying to get away from Nicholas or his mum.
As the book opens, Nicholas and his mum are on a vacation in Spain. They don’t speak Spanish and while the taxi driver/tour guide is nice, neither he nor his mom is really sure what’s going on. At some point he leaves the taxi to go pee. As it turns out though, he winds up peeing on the ancient grave of a very bad man, Toribio de Cobrales. Of course, there is a curse on this grave (it really should have been better protected, no?)–anyone who defiles it in any way will have nothing but bad luck thrown at him for the rest of his life. Nicholas is really sorry, he didn’t realize any of that, but it doesn’t matter. As soon as he defiles the grave the curse comes at them, with thunderclaps and earthquakes and all manner of trouble falling on them in the next few minutes.
Thanks to the quick thinking of the taxi driver, they get Nicholas to the local witch who lightens the curse somewhat. Her solution is to put a kind of safe spell around him, making him safe from the curse (which would surely have killed him); however, everyone around him is fair game. A sample of the curse is that plants wither at his touch, animals behave strangely around him, tests will result in chaos, and all those around him are touched by incredible bad fortune like attacking wasps, a roving mountain lion and an occasional unexplained fire.
Needless to say, Nicholas quickly loses friends since no one wants to be near him. He also causes all manner of trouble to get hurled upon his poor teachers. And, perhaps unfairly but what can you do, he is kicked out of schools all around England.
He finally ends up in a school where the Headmaster hasn’t heard of him. And while strange tings have been happening around Nicholas, the headmaster isn’t certain there is something going on. However, when a fellow headmaster calls and warns him to kick Nicholas out, Nicholas’ headmaster decides to help the boy and seeks out a mystic. He even rearranges the school to best suit Nicholas’ challenges.
This new school also has a girl who is rebuffed by her fellow students. Her name is Fiona and she is…odd. She spends most of her time preparing for disasters. But because she is always prepared, she is always calm and relaxed. So when some bad things start happening, Fiona is there to mitigate the damage. And it turns out that Fiona’s calmness really helps with Nicholas’ problem. It seems that when he is agitated, the curse really strikes hard (hence the test problem). So Fiona is like his lucky rabbit’s foot. Indeed, Nicholas even goes to Fiona’s house–he hasn’t been to someone’s house in years because bad things always happen to those house he visits.
It turns out that Fiona’s father is a wonderfully upbeat man. Despite the fact that some pretty bad things have happened to him–he is blind, for one–Fiona’s father is never bothered by things. It is his physical troubles that inspired Fiona to start taking safety classes and learning to be so calm and self-sufficient. And, in fact, Fiona’s father is so upbeat and carefree, that nothing bad ever happens to them when Nicholas is visiting. Fiona’s father thinks that Nicholas is rather good luck for her, since she didn’t have anyone to be friends with before.
I actually felt like the story was coming to and end here, but there is a lot more, in which Nicholas attempts to break the curse. Part of this involves him saying a mantra like “I am lucky. Good things happen to me” several times a day. And I have actually decided to start saying this as well, because, heck, it couldn’t hurt. The way the curse is finally lifted (because of course it would be) is mystical and funny and weird and really unexpected.
We all enjoyed this book quite a lot. And Glen McReady did a great job reading it–he used different voices and made the story all the more fun.
Thank you Paul for a wonderful review. Andrew will be delighted. The Unluckiest Boy is typical of Andrew’s books so I am sure you will enjoy the others too. Details on http://www.andrewnorriss.co.uk and on my website where there are school resources too.
Jane Norriss @thewriterswife