REVIEW: Noodle Head, by Jonathan Kebbe

The theme of sending troubled or delinquent adolescents off to some kind of correctional institution seems to be a popular one nowadays. It started with Louis Sachar's wonderful book 'Holes'; more recently we have had 'Come Clean', by Terri Paddock, in which Justine is sent by her parents to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre. Like Stanley, she suffers at the hands of the sadists who run it - and as in Holes they get their come-uppance in the end. A real life example comes from Augusten Burroughs, author of the amazing memoir of his seriously dysfuntional childhood 'Running with Scissors', where you don't know whether to laugh or be horrified. In his follow-up, 'Dry', he writes with the same black humour about the time spent in a clinic for alcoholics.

But back to Noodle-Head. Described in the blurb as a junior 'One flew over the cuckoo's nest', this tells of how Marcus King, called Noodle Head on account of his curly hair, is sent to a correctional facility for young offenders. The treatment at Dovedale Hall is to drug you senseless so that you cooperate and 'reform'. But Marcus tries to resist, with terrifying consequences.