FIRST THOUGHTS

The Dubious Salvation Of Jack V.

CHILD narrators are nothing new. Neither are coming-of-age stories. But what Jacques Strauss has done with his debut novel is inject a fresh new voice, poetic and vulgar in turn, into the literary world.

Jack Viljee, half Afrikaans and half English, is 11 years old and living in South Africa in 1989 — a time of dramatic change. For him, however, the world is reasonably simple.