Pope Max (David Caddy, Fremantle Press, $16.95 pb, ISBN 9781921361180, May) ***

A brilliant story with a great twist—Pope Max by David Caddy is about Max, a 14-year-old Italian Australian who wants to be Pope. Max promised his dying Nonno that one day, Max would become Pope. One weekend, Max meets Jessie, a girl his age who has recently moved to the area. At school, he discovers she is a Goth. His classmates insult and isolate her, but surely the future Pope is above such behaviour? Pope Max perfectly captures the trials of not just life in high school for a teenage boy, but the difficulty every Catholic faces in trying to integrate religion with daily life. Is a fist-fight with a bully who prevents you getting to church the right thing to do? How do you tell a beautiful but awful girl that her romantic designs will come to nothing because you want to be the Pope? How do you get your traditional Italian parents to accept your Goth friend, who they think uses drugs and worships Satan? I can’t see Pope Max becoming the next Harry Potter, but it’s certainly a really funny, interesting and well-written book, perfect for the young teenage boy market.

Jessica Broadbent is a former bookseller who can’t seem to help tidying the shelves in bookstores she visits

This review from Australian Bookseller & Publisher magazine is reproduced by kind permission of Thorpe-Bowker, a division of R R Bowker LLC. © Copyright 2008, Thorpe-Bowker

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