Very good read. Read it quickly. Author does a good job of developing characters that hook you in from the beginning. ( )

Don't expect the quirky Paul Jennings of Round the Twist and the "Un" series in this dark tale of a boy struggling to come to terms with who he is through his writing. It's about Robin who lives in a ski village in the Australian alps with his father. His father is gruff and uncommunicative and Robin believes that he drove his mother away as his father refuses point blank to talk about her. Enter Charlie, a vivacious caring girl who wants to help Robin open up his feelings about his mother abandoning him. Cue a bird with a broken wing which Robin decides to kill to put out of its pain. Enter Charlie stage right just as Robin does the deed. Horrified she refuses to hear his side of the story and shuts him out of her life. This causes Robin to seek solace with the manipulating, slutty Verushka - Robin is aware of is happening to him, but he seems unable to stop the spiral down into her dark world of drugs and other sordid pleasures. It is ultimately Robin's father, on seeing a swallow's nest and dissolving into a pool of tears that brings things to a head. Why is his father acting so strangely? Does it have anything to do with the red hair in the nest - hair that matches the red colour that was his mother's? Why is his father visiting an abandoned mine shaft in a snow storm? Robin is about to make an horrifying discovery and Charlie will be by his side it when it happens. This book is interspersed with short fables, supposedly written by Robin to help him sort through his feelings about Charlie, Verushka, and his parents. Contains tame sex scenes and drug use - older readers.