Blue Eyed Boy

Joanne Harris

Doubleday

Otago Daily Times, May 22nd 2010

Joanne Harris’s latest novel, Blue Eyed Boy is, quite literally, a world away from that of Chocolat. Welcome to badguysrock.com, a cyberspace community where wannabes can post their fantasies of crime and evil to an appreciative audience of fellow dispossessed, angry or dysfunctional fellow travellers. 

Created by and controlled by B.B., the blue eyed boy of the title, the website is a place for confession and revelation in complete anonymity.  There are no names, although B.B. knows exactly who its members are, and no rules. The ones that exist, B.B. keeps to himself.

The novel unfolds as a combination of restricted diary entries and public posts, controlled and revealed by B.B.  Born with synesthesia, words have tastes and smells that constantly threaten to trigger paralysing migraines, forcing him to shield himself from reality behind his I-pod and his computer. At forty-two, he still lives with his controlling and abusive mother-the precious and sole surviving of her three sons, and it is only in the virtual world of badguysrock.com that he can find escape.  Or so it seems.  On the internet you can be anybody you want; and the lines between fact and fiction, actor and avatar, are infinitely mutable. 

The two main characters, B.B. and a woman who signs herself ‘Albertine’ are somehow linked to an unspecified tragedy involving a blind young prodigy called Emily White. Stories and characters are constantly switching as B.B. stalks Albertine in an intricate cat-and-mouse game that he hopes will bring him freedom from both his present and his past.

Blue Eyed Boy sees Harris her pushing the boundaries of her writing to a new level. Disturbing, shocking and downright nasty, this thriller is impossible to put down.

https://www.odt.co.nz/entertainment/books/review-special-novels