Published by Corgi / Penguin Random House Group

I have reached page 128 – and I can’t put this volume down. Ant and her brother Mattie were put with an emergency foster family when their parents disappeared. From there they have landed up in HMP London, otherwise known as Spike – a ‘family’ prison. This used to be HMP Holloway and Pentonville. Things have changed since then. They are there as a result of Heritage crime (Noun): A previously undetected crime committed by your parents or grandparents for which you are held responsible.

Ant believes that they should fight the system – as much as is possible, however, that leaves her small brother vulnerable to that same system along with her foster parents who are also residing in HMP London along with hundreds of others.

This book is intense. Are you responsible for other people’s behaviour? At the moment people are in prison for many reasons – their beliefs, for errors of judgement, for murder. Some are caught in a system that they will never manage to escape. I am not aware, though of any society that makes the children pay for crimes committed by their parents. I have recently begun to think that ideas in books, can often reflect what could happen, unless we are careful. We are not responsible for other people’s behaviour. We are all individuals and should be taking responsibility for our selves and for our children. This is a book about blame. About society’s responsibility to the individual and the individual’s responsibility to society. To care for one another. We are responsible for our own actions…

So far there has been little in Blame to make me laugh. Its not that type of book. I relate so well to Ant and her impetuosity and the need to speak out. I hope and trust though, should I ever be in a similar situation that I too would fight, and protect. I don’t know, though. I have been lucky – my ‘fights’ have been non existent compared to this.

I did laugh out loud though on the way to work this morning. I stopped reading the story and thought I would look at any notes e.t.c. at the end of the book – for background research really for this…and as expected there is a page of acknowledgements.

The first sentence I read was the following.

‘Personally, I blame Michael Morpurgo.’

I had to get off the tube at that point (because I had arrived for work) – but will be reading the rest of the Acknowledgments before I continue Blame – I suspect Simon Mayo there is more to that statement than at first appears..

This is an important book. I hope that the world becomes a better place, and not a worse one.

Simon Mayo is also the author of the 9 – 12 ‘Itch’ trilogy Itch, Itch Rocks and Itch Craft – about a boy who collects samples of all the elements of the periodic table – a marvellous series for those who are ‘into’ science…