WISE OWL
Teacher Jim Stevens puts more than just his job on the line when he makes friends with street wise teenage pupil Shamayal Thomas, even going so far as to give him the keys to his flat!
When Jim is injured in a playground knife attack, Shamayal reveals the friendship to teacher Ayisha Emmanuelle, a woman who doggedly sticks to the rules of her job even when the regulations might be questionable. Instinct tells her to report the friendship to the school authorities, although she reluctantly decides not to do that. As time goes on Ayisha grows to understand the bond between Jim and Shamayal and the significance of the owl photograph that hangs in his living room.
Davis is the master of the flashback and uses it to dramatically interweave the narrative between the present and the summer of 1992, when Jim was a young boy growing up on the same council estate as Shamayal.
Funeral for an Owl is a complex, well-crafted book with stark, bold writing that gives it the intensity of a documentary. The opening chapter has a frame by frame quality with a slow burning tension that culminates in Jim’s stabbing, Ayisha’s attempts to help him and the sickening realisation that her lips are smeared in his blood when she pulls her hand away from her mouth.
This is a powerful, sobering novel that demonstrates why Davis is an exciting, literary talent.
Reviewed by Juliette Foster
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