"While Eddie's parents are away in Scotland he has to stay and help out at his auntie's boarding house in New Brighton."

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Product Description

While Eddie's parents are away in Scotland he has to stay and help out at his auntie's boarding house in New Brighton. Here he pals up with his charismatic cousin Ray, a well-meaning teddy boy who breaks his mother's heart with his alternating charm and fecklessness and meets Julia, a troubled beauty who twists him around her little finger. But as Eddie becomes involved with the sinister joke shop The Box of Tricks - and its under-the-counter packages - he begins to learn more about the needs of others than he bargained for.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #172265 in Books
• Published on: 2009-07-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 326 pages

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Customer Reviews

'Box of Tricks' by Jeff Phelps
I've just this minute finished reading `Box of Tricks' by Jeff Phelps and I found it an absolute `page-turner'.
It contains a wonderful ensemble of characters who are thrown together in an early 1960s, boarding house in the seaside resort of New Brighton.
The characters involve the reader from the start and as the plot unfolds, through excellent story telling, you become involved in the fascinating twists and turns of their lives.
The narrative is recounted by Eddie a teenage boy who has to come to terms with the dodgy dealings of his cousin Ray; the petulance of Julia, the girl he falls in love with; the demands of his aunt and grandmother and the theatricality of a Gilbert and Sullivan opera company lodging at the boarding house.
Jeff Phelps perfectly recreates a time and place and fills it with people and events which reward his readers with a more than satisfying experience.
I can strongly recommend this book.
David Bingham
( 11.08.09 )

Intelligent and enjoyable literary novel
Box of Tricks is difficult to categorize. It's part comedy, part nostalgia, part coming-of-age novel. But it also explores some deeper themes of freedom and responsibility, especially towards one's family.

The setting of the book - a British seaside town in the early 1960s - reflects a time when society itself was changing rapidly. Two of the younger characters - teenage tearaway Ray and precocious aspiring model Julia - are enthusiastically embracing the new freedoms. The narrator, the slightly younger Eddie, finds himself torn between the old and the new.

Box of Tricks is beautifully written, in fluid, evocative prose. Yet though it is undoubtedly a literary novel, the author also weaves a cleverly constructed plot, with some surprising twists and turns. Many of these centre on the eponymous back-street joke shop, which plays a pivotal role in the story.

Box of Tricks starts off slowly, then the pace speeds up as the key characters find their lives changing forever. The novel moves towards a conclusion that is touching without being over-sentimental. It answers enough questions to leave readers satisfied, yet enough unsaid to resonate long after the book has been put down.

Overall, Box of Tricks gets my highest recommendation as an intelligent, thought-provoking, but above all hugely enjoyable read.