Teen Pick: 15 Days Without a Head
15 Days Without a Head by Dave Cousins
~Reviewed by Sucy (Agincourt Branch YAG Member)
Life is hard for 15 year old Laurence Roach as his mom is a depressed alcoholic and his 6 year old brother believe he's a dog. All he wanted was to have a normal life, but one day when his mother doesn't come home, Laurence decides to keep his mom's disappearance a secret to prevent Child Protective Services from taking them away. He keeps up the pretense that his mother is still around by cross-dressing as her. After two weeks on their own, running out of money and food, and with suspicious adults suspecting something fishy, Laurence finally discovers what happened to his mother. And that’s when the trouble really begins…
I would recommend this book for teenagers to read because it's a very heartwarming and touching book. It deals with real life issues of addiction and child abuse. It is humourous at times and an overall must read.
10 thoughts on “Teen Pick: 15 Days Without a Head”
This sounds like a really good book! I hope it’s available in the library closest to my home!
I can’t wait to read this!
Wow just wow… I saw it at the library and was debating whether or not to take it. I decided not to and then you tell me I should’ve taken it.
The worst luck.
That sounds really good, if I find it i’ll sign it out, sounds cool
Wow…Laurence must have a lot of courage.
This sounds like a book which will bring you to deep thoughts and make you think much into our lives… Just my kind! I’ve just put this book on hold. I’m really hoping it arrives soon!
I would also like to see how humor can ever take place in a book with a summary bringing the mood of quiet, daring, and mysteriously silence. Makes me think even more about how this book will turn out!
This book seems like more of the same, not neccesarily a bad thing, unless the paradigm in question is not very appealling. So far these types of books (teen fiction) have to be compelling or thought-provoking in any way, and the characters seem like pretentious, shallow archetypes. I hope this book avoids those pitfalls.
15 Days Without a Head is an unusual, although fitting, title. I believe this novel is a coming-of-age story above all else. The plot centres around the maturation of the protagonist, Laurence. He has an alcoholic mother who leaves him to take care of his six-year old half-brother Jay often, so he has lost his childhood optimism and innocence. In other words, this book isn’t a Bildungsroman in the same way as To Kill a Mockingbird (as most coming-of-age novels are automatically associated with). 15 Days Without a Head is largely about Laurence’s experiences becoming a premature adult through looking after himself and Jay for fifteen straight days after their mother disappears after work one day. I think the title is both a direct reference to how Laurence quote-on-quote lost his head in the transition from adolescence to adult and to how his irresponsible mother way the head of the family until he replaced her.
I believe that the quality of this book is quite high. The plot is well-written, suspenseful, and engaging. Cousins accurately characterizes both Laurence and Jay in a situation where I could see most authors leaving them – or at least Jay – flat and static. Minor characters, such as Laurence’s friend and ally, Mina, were also introduced as humans instead of simple plot devices. I felt that this made the novel more realistic and allowed me to compare this book with unfortunate similar situations in real life.
However, I also feel that the ending to 15 Days Without a Head was too happy. While it wasn’t perfect, all major problems were somehow, for better or worse, ended. While I was allowed to have a feeling of closure while finishing the book, I concluded that this novel should have had a more rocky and unsure way of concluding events for the sake of realism. Unfortunately, I cannot go into details for fear of spoiling events for future or current readers.
I also liked and disliked the way the story is divided into chapters titled as unique days of the week, such as “Blursday” and “Frightday.” I could inititally keep track of the days, but I soon lost track as the days blurred into “Doomsday” and “Slumday.” I had to keep backtracking to confirm what actually day the book had progressed to. This seems like a minor inconvenience, but it annoyed me. I wanted to be able to easily keep track of what day out of the 15 Laurence and Jay were on. That way, I could better feel the building tension and climax of the story. However, I eventually gave up and decided to just appreciate the symbolic meaning and foreshadowing of “Madnessday” and “Today.”
In essence, I think this book is for anyone who is worried about growing up, likes Scooby-Doo (which is referenced quite a bit), or has the ability to laugh in a grim situation. I found it to be a very satisfying read with only a few issues.
Laurence is so brave. Isn’t he afraid that people will find out that his mother is gone?