Flyboy and the Invisible
Matt Zurbo

Penguin: YA Fiction 2001

245p pbk $16.95

ISBN:  0-14-029751-0

Flyboy and the invisible is a great book written by the author of Idiot Pride, Matt Zurbo. This book is excellent and a lot like Idiot Pride, but different in a lot of ways. The story structure is very alike, as is the writing style and the structure of each chapter. Matt Zurbo has not lost his touch with the real issues of teenage life, or how to convey them in his books.

The story is based around a young lout called Carlo and his best friend Will. Carlo has a dream of cool music, gutsy cars and open desert roads. He keeps this dream to help him get through the hard times when all the townspeople turn on him and his best friend. Will can fly using the Earth’s magnetic fields to fly around on. And there are a bunch of mysterious men around the town that seem to disappear every day but nobody notices.

The story is pretty unbelievable, but because it is written so well it manages to convince you that Flyboy can fly and there are really mysterious “Tunnel Men” out there. The words and the way that the story is written managed to suck me right into the story, and to almost see the harsh desert, the streams of molten lava in the caves and the awful, dusty country town that Carlo and Will called home. These features make it one of the best books I have ever read and is one of the only books that I have ever read cover to cover more than once.

The characters in this book are described just right to build up a perfect mental picture of them in your mind. There are some, such as the “Tunnel Men” and the “Smyth Brothers” that the book makes you hate and really want something bad to happen to them. Then there are the good ones such as “Vandals”, the good natured but massive surfie cop and the town baddie “Roat Smyth” that I found myself siding with as the story progressed. It is unusual for a book to have such an effect on me and I really enjoyed it.

Flyboy and the invisible is one of the best books I have read in ages and I would recommend it to anyone over 13 (as it has a bit of bad language in it) who enjoys reading enthralling adventurous stories that still hit close to home. I enjoyed it thoroughly and really think that anyone else would.

10/10