Richie's Picks: CANDY by Kevin Brooks, Scholastic/The Chicken House, March 2005, ISBN: 0-439-68327-0

"I was innocent then.
Just a boy.
On a train.
With a lump.
And a hat.
That was all the world I needed to know."

Joe Beck's got a family life that is nothing to write home about. His father goes off to "date" his mother. She moved out at some point in the past, choosing not to deal with the home and children thing. Joe hasn't seen Mom since she left. Joe's older sister Gina the nurse lives at home, but Dad can't stand Mike, the black boyfriend Gina met at the hospital. Joe feels his dad treats him like a child while expecting him to act like an adult.

Joe Beck tells us absolutely nothing of his days in high school. His father the gynecologist is concerned that Joe's ignoring school and wasting his life away. It seems to Dad that Joe is interested only in his band, the Katies.

"I got up and turned on the TV, setting the volume just loud enough to drown out the music, then I fetched my guitar from the corner of the room and started to pick out some chords. As far as I was aware, I wasn't playing anything in particular, I was just strumming...just seeing what happened...mindlessly repeating the same magical chords - G to C, G to C - over and over again...nice and slow, deep and heavy, open and raw, letting the harmonies find themselves."

Joe Beck first meets Candy after arriving in London one afternoon, on the way to an appointment to have a ganglion cyst aspirated. His dad's physician friend successfully draws the fluid out of the lump on his wrist. In their initial, brief encounter Candy does a similar job on Joe's heart.

"Deep down inside me, buried beneath all the chaos, I could sense a feeling I'd never felt before. I didn't know what it was. I didn't know if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling or something in between...I wasn't even sure it was a feeling at all. It was just something - an unknown shade, a barely perceptible signal, like a flickering candle on a distant hill. I knew it was there, but most of the time it was too faint to see, and even when I could see it, I couldn't tell if I was seeing it or hearing it or smelling it or feeling it...
"It was too many things all at once: a light in the darkness, a crying voice, the scent of fresh-washed skin, some wonderful oblivion..."

Joe goes home and writes a song about the girl he's met. His band adopts and refines it, and an industry talent scout takes notice of the band during a London gig because of it.

But that's irrelevant now, along with everything else. School. Dad. Band. Doesn't matter. Nothing matters except for Candy.

But the problem is that Joe's dream girl is really a heroin-addicted prostitute with a way-scary and deadly-violent pimp named Iggy. And Candy inhabits a different world, "a world of violence and pain and darkness."

CANDY is the story of Joe Beck's loss of innocence and what results from his decision to invade Candy's world.

"As I unwound the sellotape and cautiously positioned his arms behind his back, I felt like a vet in a safari park, tending to an anaesthetised beast - ready to jump and run at the slightest sign of life. As quickly as I could, I wound half the roll of sellotape around his wrists, then I shuffled down and wound the other half around his ankles. It was a lot of tape, and I wound it as tightly as I could, but I didn't think it would hold him for long when he finally woke up."

Kevin Brooks has written both a heart-stopping thriller of a tale and a gut-wrenching portrait of heroin addiction. It is truly a challenge to avoid tossing out a stream of explicatives in trying to adequately express how exhilarating and heartbreaking a story CANDY is.

Richie Partington
http://richiespicks.com
BudNotBuddy@aol.com ( )

Candy is a compelling book. I found myself not wanting to put it down. I was drawn the characters. ( )

Very realistic, no happy ending

Joe is a guy who is not into females at that time he’s into school which he hardly goes to and his band as a brass player. So one day he was getting his hand fixed, had a lump on his wrist and his father’s friend was going to suck what ever that made that lump on his wrist and he that when he met this wonderful girl. Joe describes her as an oval face and icy eyes and a wonderful body.” where are you going “she said “I am going to west and before they can even say a word Joe’s bus came along and so then Joe had no other choice but to get on the bus leaving the beautiful mysterious girl there all alone. so then he was late to the appointment anyway but he didn’t care he thought it was worth it he didn’t waste the time he missed but he couldn’t believe that she would ever like him or even talk to him it was unbelievable to him but he got over he thought he would never see her but the feeling just stayed there! So the doctor sucked it out and he came back to the bus stop so he can go to train station but he was very hungry so he went to nearest McDonalds to get something to eat ,so he was next in line and there she was, same icy eyes, oval face beautiful smile that’s shows her bright teeth. He was so busy looking at her that all his money flew out of his pocket went all over the restaurant and she laughed and helped him get his money and then on e coin rolled over these big black men the certainly looked like trouble he didn’t want to go anywhere near so she realized he didn’t want to go so she went instead she walked over their talked to the guys and picked up the coin and came back giving it back “ they are not mean as they look like” she said Joe couldn’t help but look down like a little child that got in trouble by stealing cookies at of a cookie jar. then he offer to buy her something so she ordered a cup of coffee and they sat next to the window “I’m candy” Joe he replied so she said where did you go candy asked to fix my hand it had a lump on my wrist so I went suck the fluid out .so then candy said she needed to go to the bathroom that took over one hour but when she came back she was not herself and her eyes were a little red but it didn’t mattered to Joe at that time knew that she just took drugs but he didn’t want to become bossy already he just met her he didn’t want to lose her already ,something about her just drew his attention to him and then this guy named iggy comes along and he threatens him if he sees him again he kill imitating cutting his neck of. He could not believe that he was about to be dead so he just home then his dad was asking him why he was so late and he said that the trains were running late and he said that calling him would been the best choice. And so Joe said his little sorry and asked who was here dad said his older sister Gina was there and mike her boyfriend .Gina was a sister to Joe he liked her missed her because he was always at collage and the only time she there she was with her boyfriend mike he didn’t mind mike was cool in a way he was black and dad never liked the idea about Gina dating mike but it was not his choice! So the went and said hi to both of them and went striate to his room then he just sat down thinking about candy he loved they way she smiled and her laugh was unbelievable then he got his guitar and went into dream land and he kept saying candy and singing and singing so Gina caught him in the act and said who was candy and he stumbled and said no one and then Gina promised if he told them his secret they’ll tell them theirs he thought that was fair so he told them about the day he had and they told him they were getting engaged “what will dad say” Joe asked” it doesn’t matter what he says” Gina replied so then he went to bed and found her number in his pocket.

So he waited foe a week to finally call her because he was going crazy so they arranged to go to the zoo on the following day just to see they hung out then she was in the bathroom for an hour then her phone rang and she ran off. So that day was fair but not wroth of cutting school lying to dad and getting Gina to cover him by lying to her about band practice for an important concert. Dad found out any way he was worry sick about him then he grounded him for his business trip except the band concert he was lucky that was true any way dad would never found out if the school never called. so there was a song he wrote about candy then they sung it at the concert Gina, mike and candy were suppose to came and they were there until iggy showed up and dragged her and when mike tried to stop them he end up damaged! Joe ran out of the band with sister and never saw candy since later he found out that she was a prostitute and she would pay iggy to get drugs.

Joe Beck goes on his normal rutine to the doctors, but on his way back he meets a girl named Candy. Candy was different from other girls, and since the first time he talked to her, Joe became obsessed. When Candy and Joe get together, they realize that just "being together" isn't that easy. Throughout struggles and some pretty hard times, they realize what they both want out of eachother and their lifes. ( )

Very depressing story of what can happen when attraction turns to obession. ( )

Joe Beck's life is pretty run-of-the-mill. Parents separated, doesn't get on so well with his father, goes to school, plays with a band, tries to stay out of trouble. And then he meets Candy.

Something about her draws him right in. He can't believe she's talking to him. That he could be so lucky. And when he gets chased off by a very large and very scary Iggy, who can only be her Pimp, he can't believe that either. He mulls it over for a week, after finding her number in his pocket, then calls to ask her out, knowing it's the only thing to do.

At the Zoo she seems so normal. She explains Iggy away as some guy who's just a little crazy. Joe wants to believe it, so he does. When she leaves him in the cafe to go to the bathroom and comes back changed, he understands she must use drugs, but he doesn't give that much thought either. She likes him. He likes her.

But when she comes to his Band's show only to be dragged off by Iggy and his hoarde, a fight which gets Joe's brother-in-law to be injured, things come to a head. With nowhere left to turn, he finally tells his sister everything. Unable to believe there's nothing he can do to help, and unable to get Candy on the phone, as soon as his dad's left for his business trip, Joe takes off, losing all cares about being grounded.

He takes a train back to the spot where he first stumbled into her. Nothing. He wanders around London, trying to find somewhere within 10 minutes that could be the spot where she lives. If that part was true. Ready to admit defeat, he's heading back to catch another train when he spots Iggy leaving the station, and gets it in his head to follow him.

After being led to the house, he hides in the bushes for quite awhile, making his move when an elderly woman loaded down with shopping bags arrives. He helps her carry them in, then takes off up the stairs to find Candy. And find her he does--severely battered and bruised. Broken, she tells him everything. How she came to be here, how it went so far. They're concocting a plan to get her out of there when Iggy returns. There's no saying if Joe could have stayed hidden in the bathroom if his cell phone hadn't rung. But it did. And things very suddenly became life or death.

With a straight-edge razor held to his throat, Joe is staring at the end, when Candy breaks a lamp against Iggy's head. They quickly bind him up with tape, and take off into the night. They stop at Joe's house for supplies, then board another train, heading for the summer cottage. The plan is to get Candy clean, then take it from there. Iggy won't find them. He's sure of it, despite a nagging at the back of his brain.

But just when the worst of it seems over, when Candy seems to be herself again, and not a withdrawl insane version, Joe realizes just what kind of trouble he's in. Iggy has his sister. He can find them, because Joe tells him exactly where they are. Any bargaining power he had has gone. Even with Mike on the way to help, there's no knowing if he'll beat Iggy to them, or what they can do even if he does.

In the end, it turns out in a way no one would have imagined.

Time goes by, but Joe can't remember how life was before Candy. All he can do is struggle to find his way back to it. ( )