Author: Martyn Bedford
Publisher: Wendy Lamb Books
Copyright: 2011
ISBN: 9780385739900
Reading Level/Interest Age: Grade 7 and up
Genre: Paranormal and Horror--Unexplained Phenomena--Out-of-Body Experiences
Reader’s Annotation: Though Flip is handsome and popular, all Alex wants to do is get back to his own body and his own life.
Plot Summary
Alex wakes up from terrifying dreams in another boy’s body, hundreds of miles from home and six months after the last night he remembers. His body is lying in a coma in a London hospital, and he is inhabiting the body of Philip, aka Flip, the son of a middle-class Yorkshire family. Alex’s soul fled his body when the doctors began talking about pulling the plug. In a process called psychic evacuation, it took over the body of someone closely linked to him (Flip and Alex were born in the same hospital on the same day). It takes Alex a while to figure all this out, of course, and even longer to figure out what to do about it. In the meantime he has to go to Flip’s school, avoid Flip’s angry girlfriends, and live with Flip’s family. Alex’s visits to his parents and best friend lead to his arrest, and when he confides in a girl from Flip’s school she thinks he’s crazy, too. He finally finds people to talk to about his situation on a web forum for psychic evacuees. When one of them, a young man named Rob, meets him in person, Alex is at first overjoyed. But it soon becomes clear that the only way Rob is willing to help is by convincing Alex to give up on his old life. Alex realizes he’ll have to go it alone if he’s to have any chance of getting his body, his friends, and his family back.
Critical Evaluation
Flip is an imaginative story with a believable, sympathetic character at its heart. The premise alone is interesting, but Alex’s vivid emotional reactions to his predicament are what make the book work. When he finds himself in Flip’s body, all he wants is to talk to his mother. When he visits his house and sees his obnoxious little brother, he’s overcome with love. He manages some empathy for Flip’s parents despite the frustration of his own situation. He also has moments of rage when he lashes out at the people around him—the people from Flip’s life.
Bedford makes Flip an interesting (though unsympathetic) character too, without ever allowing him to speak for himself. Flip’s character is revealed only in other people’s reactions to Alex in Flip’s body. Flip’s sister is scathing; his friends are slavishly eager for his approval.
The writing is solid, but not beautiful. When it slipped into incomplete sentences with odd formatting toward the end, it took me a moment to understand that it wasn’t typos but the paranormal action of the climactic moment affecting the text. However, the pacing is good and the plotting tight. The satisfying ending ties up all the loose threads in credible ways.
Curriculum Ties: N/A
Booktalking Ideas
Give character profiles of Alex and Flip, then ask, "What would happen if they switched places?"
Read the first section of the first chapter, to "Which would've been fine if he'd known anyone called Philip."
Challenge Issues: Mild language
In the defense file, I will include my library's selection policy, ALA's Library Bill of Rights, ALA's guidelines on free access to libraries for minors (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/intfreedom/librarybill/interpretations/freeaccesslibraries.cfm), and ALA's strategies and tips for dealing with challenges to library materials (http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/challengeslibrarymaterials/copingwithchallenges/strategiestips/index.cfm). I will also include my library's reconsideration form, in case challenges to this book cannot be defused with "tea and sympathy." I'll include positive reviews from School Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, and Booklist.
About the Author
I grew up in Croydon and worked in a bank for a year. But this is true of so many writers it has become a cliché. So let me tell you about some of the other stuff.
My dad, Peter, was a sheet-metal worker; my mum, Marjorie, a wages clerk. I have no brothers or sisters. We never had a foreign holiday till I was 17. They took me to Belgium for a week, to prove I hadn’t been missing anything. I loved them both. They’re dead, now, but I still love them.
I went to a big comprehensive school and enjoyed my time there so much I wrote my first adult novel about a disturbed man who takes revenge on his former teachers. Made a mess of my A-levels (too much snooker, too little effort) and had to do a re-sit to get into journalism college.
Learned my lesson, though – I spent much of the journalism course drinking, playing pool or going on protest marches. “Home” was a caravan in a field with two mates from the course. Take my advice, don’t live in a caravan. Even so, it still rates as just about the best year of my life.
For the next 15 years I worked as a news reporter, football correspondent, features writer and sub-editor on newspapers all over England (and one in Wales).
Between jobs I went backpacking in Europe, North America, Australia and Asia. I taught English in Hong Kong, despite speaking no Cantonese and being unqualified to teach English (or anything else), and returned from India with dysentery, hepatitis and pneumonia, having lost a quarter of my body weight. Happy days.
All this time, through my 20s and early 30s, I wrote fiction – short stories, a couple of abandoned novels – did creative writing classes, joined a writers’ group … until it dawned on me that I wanted to be a writer more than anything. So, I quit my job and enrolled on the Creative Writing MA at the University of East Anglia. That was where I began Acts of Revision.
I’ve been writing novels ever since – first for adults, now for teenagers – and when I’m not doing that, I teach creative writing (even though I still have no teaching qualifications.) Best of all, though, I have a wife, Damaris, and two daughters, Josie and Polly. And I don’t live in Croydon anymore.
http://martynbedford.com/bio/
Why is this title included?I read about this book in an NPR article that identified five recent YA releases with crossover appeal for adults (http://www.npr.org/2011/08/09/137456199/hooray-for-ya-teen-novels-for-readers-of-all-ages). Its strong male narrator and engaging plot make it a good choice for reluctant (male) readers.