J. C. Burke (1)Reseñas

This book should never have been written let alone published.

I found Gemma to be completely unlikeable. she is self-absorbed, bratty, and far to intent on 'getting off'. I can't say what 16 year olds in 1990 were like but I could not make common ground with this girl at all.

And the writing style, what on earth was the author thinking? Such as on page 37 "I stood up, my hungry bum, swallowing my red-striped undies, was on full show for everyone to see. Including Ralph.” There is NOTHING right about this sentence. This sentence, no this book is so bad that at page 50 I give up.

Omg! A book set in Australia in the 1990s is now classed as history! Burke has done a fantastic job of recreating the time through references to ads on Tv, expressions used, fashions and famous people. This is the story of Gemma whose gay brother Billy is a famous stylist in New York and has promised to come back to Australia to do Gemma's look for her formal at the end of the year. He has also promised to do the same for 2 of her friends so Gemma must choose who will be done.
But this is the age of the new killer disease stricking down members of the gay community like bowling pins, and after Gemma catches her mother making secret phone calls to her brother, she suspects something terrible is about to happen.
This is a book about the terrible effects of AIDS - the fear in the community of any gay person having it and passing it on, and then the fear of close family also having the disease. Then there are the awful physical effects - the lack of immunity that lead to death from pneumonia or worse a cat related disease that caused you to go insane while you wasted away.
Once again, I bawled my eyes out at the end of this, so engrossed was I with the characters in the story.
Due to swearing, sexual descriptions and other issues, this is for mature readers.

This book never really captured my attention. Violent at times, I found eighteen year-old, Damon Styles an obnoxious protagonist. Angry, rude, surly and with a huge chip on his shoulder, his only redeeming quality is his kindness to animals. However, I did find the Pigman an interesting character. Struggling with memories of war it is the Pigman who has a beneficial influence on Damon. This will probably appeal to boys but I really struggled to reach the end of this book.

A terrific psychological thriller that will hold the reader captivated to the last page.

I found this extremely disappointing after reading "The Red Cardigan". It lacked the excitement, suspense and chills that the first book had.

Pig Boy Book Recommendation
Stuart Benjamin 8s
Pig Boy (2011) is a Thriller and a Drama written by J.C. Burke. It is about a heavily disturbed and bullied boy, who is abandoned by everyone around him and only finds solace with another outsider and freak called the Pigman. This book revolves around the issues of the nature of bullying, the stereotypical views of the community, and high school massacres, yet puts its own spin on this within the genre.
The main character is Damon Styles, a boy you don’t know whether to sympathise with or be horrified by at the beginning of the book. He is an angry character and always has an ironic outlook on those around him, in fact he loathes them. Burke paints a picture, putting in small references to a dark shadow in Damon’s mind. Damon mentions his lists of names, how he will learn about guns, the horrible thing in his closet. You know something’s wrong. Damon and his mother stand out as the bully target of the town. Damon can only talk to one character freely, Moe at the corner store, and he loathes him as well. The high school principle Pascoe, is the antagonist. He pretended he cared about Damon, but that was a lie. When the family received death threats in phone calls, and Damon recognized them as from a boy from his school, he came to Pascoe only for him to ignore his plea because that boy’s father was funding new gear for the school. It’s this sort of fake sympathy that really made Damon mad, so he put Pascoe on his list.
The structure of Pig Boy really accentuates Damon’s isolation. Starting the book with this ugly description of a kid on his own, the hidden messages gradually reveal that Damon is not the monster in the book but the victim instead. About halfway through the book you realise that something terrible has happened to Damon, something much worse than all his other horror stories. With continuous references to the Marshall brothers, and constant paranoia, Damon eventually reveals a gun, a murder that he witnessed. All the emotion locked up inside Damon is finally revealed in the charged and addictive concluding stages of the story. This structure where the twist in the story is gradually hinted to you is put to great use in this book, drawing in the reader and even making them question their own judgments.
There is a subgenre within the thriller based on the creation of monstrous children, which links many issues such as the relationship between mother and child, the rejection of a child in society and bullying to talk about this modern tragedy in society. An example of a book in that genre is We Need to Talk about Kevin. In that book, a mother who developed depression after struggling to make a connection with her child realised too late when the child went on to commit a high school shooting spree. In Pig Boy, the same mistrust between mother and troubled son is easily spotted, with both characters separated by a huge void of wariness. The aspects of bullying explored in this genre can be seen in many other genres and books with a violent and realistic edge, such as the Cherub series by Robert Muchamore. They all have the abandoned child in common, but whether that child is the evil or the innocent in the book is the question.
The main moral of this book reveals that the stereotypical tendencies of the community forced Damon into the monster it wanted him to be. The rejection of a troubled character such as Damon, the bullying that was ignored by adults and the way Damon couldn’t even trust his own mother all just added up to the way he turned out. If it wasn’t for Damon meeting a wise character, someone he could talk to, someone who saw him for who he was and someone who didn’t make a snap judgment of him and instantly become hostile, someone like Miro, the events in the story could have been a lot more gruesome. This book gives its own answer to the questions about the genre of child killers, saying that when the community gives up on a child, brands them a psycho and rejects them, it itself can become the monster.
In Pig Boy the structure and powerful retelling of feelings makes full use of the suspense and journey in Damon’s story. The book is filled with challenging themes aimed straight at our society, especially at the care of people society’s branded as rejects. The weight of the story stayed with me for days after – a terrific read. I recommend this book to anyone who wants to experience real feelings for a character, make that two characters who find each other in a paranoid and electric book, Pig Boy.
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Adam Smagarinsky recommends Pig Boy (JC Burke)
Pig Boy is a thrilling and exciting book written by J.C. Burke who also wrote the best-selling book “Tom Brennan”. This book never manages to lose your attention with the amazing description painting magical pictures with every new scene.
Damon Styles is an overweight 18 year old teenager mocked by all his school ruthlessly and called names like Pig Boy and ‘OINK’. However Mr Pascoe, the Principal, promises change and then backstabs Damon by expelling him from Strathven High. Damon was hurt, and was known for his inability to handle stressful situations and turn it into aggression which worried some pupils.
Damon then finds a job with the local wild pig hunter to get some extra money but Damon himself isn’t sure if he was going to use the shooting skills he learns for something else, possibly to get back at his worthless school by a huge massacre. However, after spending many trips and nights with the pig hunter, it turns out that the Serbian pig hunter called Miro was a great caring friend with lots of wisdom and stories. His school finds out about his job and the students are scared not knowing what Damon will do next. The local police arrest him even though they have no clear evidence against him. Damon is devastated but sure that Miro will save him because he is a man of his word.
A key moral that can be learnt from this book is that when bad things occur good things evolve from it or when one door closes another door opens. When Damon is expelled from his school and believes he must learn to shoot and punish everyone that has hurt him over his life, he meets Miro, a great man who teaches him many important things about life and who is also a great trustworthy man.
If you read between the lines J.C. Burke may be indicating to the reader what turns good ordinary people just like Damon into heartless killers? Although this book isn’t true many situations like this have happened all over the world such as the massacre recently in Norway. So the author wasn’t only trying to entertain people but to relate a dreadful possible scenario to what actually happens in the real world.
I found this book is very interesting and always entices you to read more. Along the way you don’t just enjoy yourself but you learn that this not just about the effects of discrimination and bullying but also about Serbian customs and the war in Serbia and the lingering effects of war on former soldiers.
I would recommend this book for advanced twelve years old readers and up as some of this book contains swear words and other mature contents. This book suits people who enjoy real life situations not fantasy or other fiction stories.

A paranormal thriller that is compelling to the end. Her grandmother had the gift and so does Evie, a “gift” that her Mum doesn’t want to acknowledge. An incident at school forces Evie to begin to explore her special ability that leads her to discovering more about the original owner of the vintage red cardigan her Dad bought for her. A good mystery that gets a little spooky. Worth reading.½

Confronting, fascinating, times when I felt I couldn't breathe due to the tension. The characters are beautifully described and the emotions churned up whilst reading this from tears to anger.
Haven't read anything that moved me as this did in a very long time. A strangely beautiful, thought provoking book.

An incredible book. Deserved to win the award it received for best older reader for CBC book week.

When four friends attend a surfing camp together friendships are tested by the competition, strangers, and the need to share the same small bunkhouse all the time.

Boken hade en väldigt lovande inledning. Det var lite lagom kusligt och spännande. Snart nog blir det dock lite väl många hysteriska anfall från Evies sida. Det är förstås trevligt att vuxna människor tror henne, men samtidigt verkar det minst sagt märkligt att pappa, pappas vänner poliser och andra köper Evies historia med drömmar, "känningar" och allt. Som sagt lovande.. men nej! Boken höll inte hela vägen.

Tom Brennan is 17 and was the hero of the rugby team at his school before the accident. Now he is repeating Year 11 in a new town, having to face his old team on the field, and coping badly with visiting his brother in gaol and his cousin in hospital.

In a small community the waves that reverberate from a fatal crash caused by one of their own seem to go on forever. What of the family of the drunken driver? In this story they find that leaving town is the only way out. Even then each must come to terms in their own way.

This is a powerfully told story with all the more impact because any one of us might one day be in the situation that faces the Brennans. You can’t go back and as Tom finds, you can’t just forget. The only way is forward.

The relationship between Tom and his brother Daniel is very important in Burke’s book. Their cousin, Fin, was also like a brother to them, and their mother’s brother was close to Daniel and helped Tom come to terms with circumstances.

2006 Winner CBCA Award - Older readers

This is a story about reaching the bottom and finding a way back up.
It’s about Tom Brennan whose family have to leave their home town after Tom’s older brother ends up in jail for killing two of his friends and severely injuring his cousin in a car accident due to drink-driving.
It’s a story about being young, popular, football-famous and then losing it all because of anger and egotism. It’s also about coming to terms with it all. Tom thinks he’ll never be able to enjoy life again, but gradually he comes to the surface again and makes friends in a new town.

Holly is a new girl on a mission. She has just started at St. Clementine’s and she is out to get revenge on the terrible Jess Flynn, who ruined her friend Calyspo’s life. Calyspo has told Holly that Jess is a liar, a shoplifter and a boyfriend stealer, but the more Holly comes to know Jess, the more she finds it hard to believe – who is telling the truth?

A supernatural thriller about a girl with clairvoyant powers called Evie who draws dead people and doesn’t understand or want the “gift” she has. When her father buys her a trendy red cardigan from the opp shop – it triggers a cry for help from a murdered girl. But can the main character cope with the messages the dead girl sends?

Sequel to the Red Cardigan. Evie, Poppy & Alex hold a séance and Evie gets a strange message. She contacts Victoria the clairvoyant who asks her to do a “reading” for a client who’s daughter died. This is the beginning of Evie’s contact with Caz, a girl who wont leave her alone until Evie and her friends solve the puzzle of the séance letters.Haunting and somewhat gruesome. Can Evie save Caz’s sister from the same fate?p.5-9 Evie’s family are coming to terms with the fact that she is psychic.

In an instant, so many lives can change. A terrible car accident sees 2 people killed, Tom’s brother Daniel in jail, his cousin Fin paralyzed, his mother trapped in her bed with depression and Tom & his sister Kylie having to start a new school after the family are “run out” of a small country town. Tom struggles to put his life back together.p.78-81 Tom’s memory of the accident. He & Matt are in the car behind.½

Review by Holly Harper, Childrens' Book Specialist -Readings.com.au
Damon Styles is angry. Angry at his mother for never getting out of bed. Angry at Andrew Parker and Darren Geraghty who antagonise him at school, making pig noises and calling him Damoink. He’s even angry at his friend Moe for the way he laughs. School is no safe haven: Damon is a smart kid who excels at writing, but unless his talents lie in sport, none of his teachers want to know about it. Everyone is determined to see Damon as trouble, and so he is. When he's finally expelled from school on his eighteenth birthday, Damon just keeps on feeling angry, except now he has a plan – he’s made a list of names, and he’s going to get his firearms license. Then he’s going to work for the Pigman hunting pigs. That way he’ll learn everything he needs to know to make things right.

I haven’t been this impressed with a main character in quite some time. Damon isn’t a nice, polite boy. He isn’t the sort of kid you’d expect to find helping little old ladies with their shopping. But he's not just all rage either. He's a complicated character, and you can't help but feel for Damon. Despite the angry outbursts, despite the shell he wears, you can see why he’d feel the way he does.

But it’s not just Damon who shines in Pig Boy – all of the characters are fascinating, and work together to build a claustrophobic world that produces a young man like Damon, from his misguided mother to the school principal who’s had enough, and especially the Miro the Pigman who takes the struggling Damon under his wing. JC Burke has created an absolutely unforgettable cast of characters in Pig Boy, and I have no doubt that this confronting book will appeal to everyone who has ever felt like the world is against them.