Far Rockaway is the most intriguing fantasy story this year with a contemporary, strong young heroine who meets some of classic literature's most compelling characters. This is an adventure of true originality which takes the reader on a journey through love, loss and hope. Genius. -- Janet Smyth - Children's and Education Programme Director, Edinburgh International Book Festival 20110817 Fletcher is known for his ingenious Stoneheart trilogy, in which London's statues come to life. This novel, set in Manhattan, celebrates stories. Teenaged Cat, wearing headphones and checking her phone, steps obliviously off a pavement into the path of a truck; her grandfather is struck, too, as he tries to save her. In a coma in hospital, Cat battles through the adventures based on the books her grandfather gave her: The Last of the Mohicans, Treasure Island and Kidnapped, boyish tales in which, this time, the girl gets a brave part. In the company of Chingachgook, Long John Silver and Alan Breck, she overcomes perils on a quest to reach Far Rockaway - the real and symbolic end of the subway line Cat and her grandfather planned to visit. The message is that story makes the world, and that real girls rescue themselves. A fine book for girls who enjoy fight scenes and boys who are not too squeamish to get past a girl on the cover.Children's Book of the WeekNicolette Jones -- Sunday Times 20110918 An exceptional writer... stunning novel. -- Sunday Telegraph 20111009 Far Rockaway plunges from 21st-century hospital drama to swashbuckling fiction as Cat finds herself in a storybook world... Fletcher is such an exceptional writer. -- The Telegraph 20111010 Hood up, ear plugs in, Cat Manno is knocked over by a fire truck while guiltily googling the plot of The Three Musketeers before her grandfather Victor discovers she hasn't read her birthday present from him. Far Rockaway by Charlie Fletcher (Hodder, GBP12.99) plunges from 21st-century hospital drama to swashbuckling fiction as Cat finds herself in a storybook world, with Chingachgook, Long John Silver and Alan Breck as her sidekicks. Fletcher is such an exceptional writer, his borrowed characters so vividly brought to life, that at no stage do readers feel they are being manipulated into reading the classics. Though that is exactly what they will want to do as soon as they have finished this stunning novel. -- The Telegraph 20111010 A cracking new story. -- Bury Free Press 20111028
