SHADOWS IN THE TWILIGHT

Six months after the events in Bridge to the Stars (2007), Joel is almost 12 and remains a loner, living as much in his imagination as in the real world. He still finds it difficult to voice his conflicts and concerns to his father, but writes of them obliquely in his journal. He interacts with his schoolmates, but he has no one he can call a friend. Instead he associates mainly with strange, disaffected, eccentric adults. When he is miraculously uninjured after a bus strikes him, he decides that he must perform a good deed in gratitude. The deed he chooses leads to a comedy of errors and causes unintentional pain to someone he cares for. For this sequel Mankell has changed the narrative voice from the immediate present-tense stream-of-consciousness to an intrusive, unnecessary voice that announces “I have another story,” and then never again occurs in the first person. The plot is thin and purposeless, and there is no attempt at a denouement. A disappointing sequel. (Fiction. 12-14)