Stone Cold by Robert Swindells: Book Review
Stone Cold
Stone Cold. ‘By golly’ it was a good book. A brilliant book by a brilliant author. Robert Swindwells tells the tale of a young boy living out on the street. With twists and turns and heart-stopping adventure, Swindwells shows once again his amazing talent to write. It’ll keep you on the edge of your seat definitely, but why? Why does it keep you reading? Well in this essay I’ll be analysing Swindwells’ novel a little more closely and giving you the answer.
Stone Cold’s structure is an interesting one – one of which I have never read before. He has a play style dual narrative that follows Link, the protagonist and Shelter, the antagonist which goes at a steady rate. They show the stories of each other and how their two worlds intertwined. Link’s part is a normal diary-like recount whereas Shelter’s follows that of a more disciplined Daily Routine Orders. They are both diary like, but you can see that Shelter is more disciplined and mostly tells us what happened and sometimes hints how he felt. This is why you find that Shelter’s ‘chapter time’ is a lot less than Link’s. Swindwells is also very thorough with description and detail on Shelter’s part. PUT EXAMPLE.
Swindwells also uses a technique which in my opinion keeps a reader on their seat; it’s when he makes the antagonist and protagonist meet before the plot builds. When Link asked for change and he was replied with ‘Change? I’d change you my lad if I had you in khaki for six weeks .‘ I knew straight away it was Shelter, as he had something of similar lines to another ‘street sleeper’ but Link did not know that this was actually a murderer he was talking to. Later on Shelter talks about Link and Ginger laughing at him and Shelter decides that ‘they’ve just signed up for ‘the Camden Horizontals. The Camden Horizontals are Shelter’s ‘army’ of the dead homeless, and when we hear this we know that Shelter is mentally ill. The plot builds upon this small but significant meeting when Shelter
Stone Cold. ‘By golly’ it was a good book. A brilliant book by a brilliant author. Robert Swindwells tells the tale of a young boy living out on the street. With twists and turns and heart-stopping adventure, Swindwells shows once again his amazing talent to write. It’ll keep you on the edge of your seat definitely, but why? Why does it keep you reading? Well in this essay I’ll be analysing Swindwells’ novel a little more closely and giving you the answer.
Stone Cold’s structure is an interesting one – one of which I have never read before. He has a play style dual narrative that follows Link, the protagonist and Shelter, the antagonist which goes at a steady rate. They show the stories of each other and how their two worlds intertwined. Link’s part is a normal diary-like recount whereas Shelter’s follows that of a more disciplined Daily Routine Orders. They are both diary like, but you can see that Shelter is more disciplined and mostly tells us what happened and sometimes hints how he felt. This is why you find that Shelter’s ‘chapter time’ is a lot less than Link’s. Swindwells is also very thorough with description and detail on Shelter’s part. PUT EXAMPLE.
Swindwells also uses a technique which in my opinion keeps a reader on their seat; it’s when he makes the antagonist and protagonist meet before the plot builds. When Link asked for change and he was replied with ‘Change? I’d change you my lad if I had you in khaki for six weeks .‘ I knew straight away it was Shelter, as he had something of similar lines to another ‘street sleeper’ but Link did not know that this was actually a murderer he was talking to. Later on Shelter talks about Link and Ginger laughing at him and Shelter decides that ‘they’ve just signed up for ‘the Camden Horizontals. The Camden Horizontals are Shelter’s ‘army’ of the dead homeless, and when we hear this we know that Shelter is mentally ill. The plot builds upon this small but significant meeting when Shelter