The Unreliable Narrator is originally from Northamptonshire and has lived in Penarth for almost five years. They will be writing a book review for Penarth Nub News every Saturday, whether it's based on a treasure found in a second-hand book shop or a glossy hardback from Griffin Books.

"Language is like that, a hiding spot for your secret self." – Dana Czapnik. We open in New York. 1993. Hip hop beats and a basketball court. The titular falconer; a statue of a boy; someone allowed to stand for only the freedom to be young, muscular, on the edge of masculinity, enraptured by his public dreams. The statue pricks at the narrator's private dream to be permitted to exist on her terms, without being required to embody anything other than herself. To be able to move through the world without conforming or excusing or reducing her femininity, her feminism, her fantasies, to stand on the precipice without apology. The Falconer stands shoulder to shoulder with Holden Caulfield's desire to be a catcher in the rye; a plaintive request that the reader fears will be trampled upon as the hero navigates the rest of her life. Perhaps not being athletic, collegiate, or young, I have resisted this book for a few months, forgetting how I had come across it and decided it was for me. However, once I began, I read it in a day, consumed all-in-one during the first sign of a Spring forcing its way through the last gasp of a frenetic February. I talk back to the book as it talks to me: I like you. You speak of narrow and of gaping things, of how it feels when your internal compass does not correspond with the direction of your feet when you do not quite know what your desire means and what it says about you, or them, or the nature of a friendship that grows and expands to fill a space so large that it almost immediately starts to atrophy. You say I need to fall in love with a person to be their friend. I feel the same about books. And I love this one. I want to know what happens to Lucy, whom she grows to become, which friends she retains and those left in her wake. Does her dad write again, does her mother regain her footing on the career ladder, does Alexis help her to achieve the fluidity of the Spanish language that she so hopes to reach? Coming-of-age is a literary trope that often seems to have little to offer to adults whose age has come and gone, which has silvered and withered at the root, but this work is joyous in the best possible way. There is a little obvious celebration, page by page, but when I close it shut, its jubilation is a thud that echoes for days. Click here to read The Unreliable Narrator's review of The Play Room by Olivia Manning.