What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible, by Ross Welford

Staff review by Chris Saliba

British children's author Ross Welford has turned out a fine follow-up to his debut novel, Time Travelling with a Hamster.

Like any 12-year-old, Ethel Leatherhead has her share of problems, the most pressing of which is her acne. It's not terrible, but visible enough for her to cop being called 'pizza face' at school. Desperate to get rid of the acne Ethel is willing to try all sorts of strange remedies.

One supposed cure is to lay under a tanning salon sunbed. When a local salon goes bust after a price war with a competitor, Ethel picks up a free sunbed. The sunbed apparently fails some of the required safety regulations, can't be re-sold and hence could be a bit dodgy. Not to worry, Ethel is willing to give anything a go, come what may. Another supposed cure that Ethel has been experimenting with is some sort of weird tea that she bought off a Chinese internet site. The product is called Dr Chang His Skin So Clear. When Ethel decides to take a larger than recommended dose of His Skin So Clear, combined with a lengthy session on the tanning bed, something very strange happens. Ethel becomes invisible!

Things go from bad to worse when the ungainly and uncouth Elliot Boyd finds out. He's a bit of a school outsider - slightly chubby and quite geeky. The gossip on the school yard is that he smells, but Ethel can soon confirm that he actually doesn't smell bad at all. The two begin an unlikely friendship that leads to all sorts of adventures, the most dramatic of which is Ethel finding out some earth shattering secrets about her mother, who died when she was only three.

Ross Welford gets a complicated mix of character, adventure, humour and bizarre inexplicable events just right in What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible. Ethel's candid first person narration of her unusual troubles is funny and delightful. She always has the right quip at the right time. Her unlikely friend, Elliot Boyd, is wonderful fun. He's a square peg in a round hole, but his honesty and goofiness will win your heart. Ethel's grandmother, Gram, adds just the right touch of British stiff-upper-lip comedy to balance out the younger characters. She's almost like something eccentric out of a Barbara Pym novel. Her lists of things 'common' and 'frightfully common' will keep you chuckling.

There's plenty to enjoy in this funny, slightly zany story that also has a special message about identity and the importance of family.

What Not to Do If You Turn Invisible, by Ross Welford. Published by HarperCollins. ISBN: 9780008156350  RRP: $14.99

To sign up for our monthly newsletter, featuring new releases, book reviews and favourite articles from around the web, click here.

 

North Melbourne Books March Newsletter - featuring Ross Welford

In the March edition of the North Melbourne Books newsletter we talk to British children's author Ross Welford about his fantastic debut novel, Time Travelling With a Hamster. 

It is an action packed story, full of breathtaking twists and turns, but also a sweet and tender story about the close relationship between a father and his son. We hope you enjoy our interview with Ross.

To view the latest March edition of our newsletter, click here. To sign up for our monthly newsletter, click here.

North Melbourne Books Talks to Ross Welford

 

North Melbourne Books: Time Travelling with a Hamster tells the story of twelve-year-old Al Chaudhury and how he uses his father’s invention, a laptop attached to a zinc garden tub, to travel back in time and save his father’s life. What inspired you to write a time travelling story and how did you come up with the idea for the time travelling machine?

Ross Welford: I've always been intruiged by "the grandfather paradox" which states that time travel cannot be possible, otherwise you could travel back in time, murder your own grandfather (before he had fathered your father) and therefore you could not exist, and could not have time-travelled in order to murder... etc etc. So I wanted to play with that idea to find out what would happen. In the story, Al's attempt to prevent the accident that, 30 years later, will kill his dad, goes horribly wrong.  had a vague idea of the ending, but a lot of what happened surprised me!

As for the time machine, I just wanted to avoid the obvious sci-fi thing of big, flashy machines.  Just this daft, simple contraption seemed better for the story.

NMB: Al’s Grandpa Byron is an interesting character. He has written a book called The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpani, which teaches how to memorise things. Grandpa Byron seems to offer a bit of a warning about the over reliance on technology. What lessons do you think he teaches the reader?

RW: I'd like to think that, if you like Grandpa Byron, you may be inspired to explore the memory stuff. The "memory palaces" stuff is all totally real, although exaggerated a bit for the sake of fiction. I sometimes wonder if, these days, we rely too much on technology. Take music concerts: the entire audience records them on their phones, instead of enjoying the performance. What on earth do they do with this shaky, blurry, bad-sounding footage? Do they ever play it back? Obviously, people want to remember a fun occasion, but surely it's better to experience it fully in the first place? I guess that is what Grandpa Byron is about: "living in the moment", to borrow an over-used phrase, and using your memory to re-live the bits you liked best.

NMB: The novel has quite an intricate plot, as Al shuttles back and forth between time dimensions. Was it a tricky business to keep up with the story?

RW: Yes! I often found myself wondering, "Why did I choose time travel?"

I honestly don't recommend it as a subject for new writers. Time travel is a bit of a juggling act to write, and there are logic traps hidden all over the place. Best avoid it, I say.

That said, it was also a lot of fun to write, and to solve, (or hide, or ignore) those problems.

NMB: The relationship between Al and his father is very touching and sweet. It makes for a strong emotional core to the book. Why did you want to write about a father-son relationship?

RW: The "missing/dead/substitute father" idea is one of the grand themes of storytelling - so much so that I don't even think it is a cliché, any more than "boy-meets-girl" is a cliché. It just seemed to make sense that Al's "quest" would involve finding his dad. Plus, on a personal level, fatherhood has been so rewarding to me that I knew I'd be able to write about it.

NMB: What books are you enjoying reading at the moment?

RW: I've just finished the excellent In Darkness by Nick Lake. It's a YA novel about a teenage boy trapped in darkness under a collapsed building after the 2013 Haiti earthquake. As he feels his life ebbing away, he recalls his violent life among the slum gangs of Haiti. There's voodoo and zombies as well, plus you get to learn the history of Haiti, and there's a terrific, well-earned ending. It's quite hard core, mind. Plenty of swearing and violence, so the upper end of YA, if it's really YA at all. It's just a very good story.

So what's next? Well, I started but temporarily abandoned Restless by William Boyd. I really like this writer, so I feel bad that this one hasn't gripped me properly. It sits there on my bedside table, glaring at me accusingly when I pick up Viz comic which I have read for decades and still find hilariously filthy. I read bits out loud to my wife who, being Swedish, doesn't get it at all.

There is also Seven Brief Lessons On Physics by Carlo Rovelli. I read a few "simple" books on physics and space and whatnot when I was writing Time Traveling With A Hamster and I try hard to understand it all, but the concepts are often so vast that I find I need frequent refreshers; I think this volume may be just the thing!

Time Travelling With a Hamster, by Ross Welford. Published by HarperCollins. RRP: $14.99

Time Travelling with a Hamster, by Ross Welford

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Ross Welford's debut novel is an action packed adventure, but also a sweet and tender story about the close relationship between a father and his son. 

On his twelfth birthday Al Chaudhury is given a letter from his father who died several years ago from a brain haemorrhage. The letter stipulates it is not to be opened for another sixteen hours. Barely able to contain himself with the excitement of it all, Al opens the letter one hour earlier than stipulated. What he reads is beyond belief. His father for years had been working in secret on a time travelling machine. The machine is set up in the disused bunker of the family’s old house. If Al can find his way into the bunker, he’ll find instructions on how to use the machine.

The letter also explains that if Al is reading the letter, it means his father has died prematurely and so needs him to travel back in time. Al soon figures out he must travel back to 1984,  when his father was involved in a go cart accident that lodged a small piece of metal in his brain. It’s this piece of metal that caused the massive brain haemorrhage. If Al can change what happened that day, then he’ll be able to change his father’s fate. He’ll live and Al with have his father back when he returns to the present time.

There’s a big problem. Al’s mum, Sarah, has remarried. Al now lives in a completely different house. His old house, the one with the bunker, has new people living there. How to get into the bunker and work the time machine without being found out?

This is one action packed story. The narrator, Al, shuttles back and forth between time dimensions, experiencing some hair raising mishaps along the way. Several times he comes close to getting stuck in the past and must call upon all his personal resources to get out of trouble. The novel also offers some light hearted science, with references to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. The actual time machine is nothing more than a laptop holding an ingenious programme, connected by some wires to a zinc garden tub. Balancing out the scientific parts of the plot and adding some gentle warnings about over reliance on technology is Al’s grandfather, Grandpa Byron. He has written a book, The Memory Palaces of the Sri Kalpani, on how to cultivate memory and is very close to Al. Lastly, of course, there is the Hamster, named Alan Shearer, who has a key role to play in saving Al’s father.

While Time Travelling with a Hamster is primarily a fun adventure story (think Back to the Future), at its heart is a sweet and tender story about the close relationship between a father and his son.

Time Travelling with a Hamster, by Ross Welford. Published by HarperCollins. ISBN: 9780008156312  RRP: $14.99

To sign up for our monthly newsletter, featuring new releases, book reviews and favourite articles from around the web, click here.