The title for Stephen May’s book comes from the British tabloids that Billy, the narrator, reads, when he is not trying to be mother/brother to Oliver. Their mother has been killed in a street robbery and both fathers (the boys are step brothers) are mostly out of the picture. Billy does have a great feeling for parenting, but his smoking weed with his friends, drinking, addiction to a computer game called “Empire,” arbitrary bed times, and bad take-out food are beginning to make Oliver act a bit too rough with his school friends, bossing them, shooting them, generally acting out, etc.
The big push come from Aunt Toni, when she makes a bid to become official guardian. Billy does a turn around, as best he can, but he begins imagining seeing the killer everywhere and often. (This is a contemporary whose life went wrong because he had a bum mother. Ann, the boys mother, was good at being a mother and making their lives happy.) Billy gets some help from the older sister of a school friend who puts the house in apple pie order before the social workers visit. He has high hopes of a romance but she is taken. He has high hopes of impressing the socials workers, but doesn’t.
Billy makes some big mistakes being too honest (an older Holden Caulfield). But he comes to trust his aunt, after she throws out a long time lazy partner and does not take up with Oliver’s dad, who has finally shown some responsibility for him. Billy will be off to college after a gap-year (I forgot to say he is no dope intellectually), his aunt will move to a town close by and Bob’s your Uncle. Sort of a too tidy ending, but they had all had a very hard year.
This was fun to read after “The paper garden” (almost finished) because the language, time periods, subjects were so radically different.