Raw (Scott Monk, read by David Tredinnick, Bolinda, $44.95 cd, ISBN 1740948270) ***

Brett Dalton is in trouble. He’s an angry young man, with a dangerous temper and no future. When a magistrate sentences him to three months at ‘The Farm’ for a break-and-enter, Brett is given the time, and support, to evaluate his life and learn painful lessons about friendship, trust, love, and loss. Monk’s engaging tale provides his readers with didactic elements on conflict resolution, and coping strategies that don’t involve using your fists. His minor characters serve to assist Brett on his journey of self discovery rather than providing any tangents to the redemption narrative. Narrator David Tredinnick brings the story to life with an ease and mood that captures both the setting and the pace of the novel. His delivery is measured, allowing the readers to access Brett’s development and eventual resolution. A popular novel with teenage boys, the CD version is presented in seven discs, which have been broken down into five-minute chunks allowing for easy bookmarking. One reservation was that my factory-fitted car CD player refused to read the discs, so it’s worth ensuring readers have the hardware to play the novel. Tredinnick won an Adult Narrator of the Year Award in 1998 and 1999 for his readings of Little White Secrets by Catherine Jinks and Silences Long Gone by Anson Cameron. In 2001 he won a Sanderson Young Adult Narrator of the Year Award for his reading of Max by Michael Hyde.Ben Beaton is a writer and teacher in Perth

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2004, Thorpe-Bowker