The Tenth Circle

Another book that will appeal to all mothers, but also to fathers (as it looks at the story from the point of view of a stay-at-home dad), or to people like me who just like a good story with a heart - Jodi Picoult's The Tenth Circle was as good a read as the previous books by her I've read.

This one deals with the scary world of teenagers - alcohol, drugs, and sex - God, I'm glad I don't have children when I read all of that - what a minefield, or as the title implies, what a Circle of Hell (plenty of references to Dante, for those of you who may be interested - I probably missed most of them, as I've never read The Divine Comedy!)

What I liked most about this book was that it included other media, cleverly incorporating a comic strip in the book (the father in the story is a comic strip artist). As any Belgian from my generation, I was raised with cartoon strips - we used to get the weekly Spirou magazine (which I see now has a web version!), and my brother was an avid reader of "bande dessinée" books. My favourites were Yoko Tsuno and Valérian & Laureline, but I read pretty much everything that came through the house.