I, Nigel Dorking

Mary-Anne Fahey (author)

Puffin Books, Australia: 2007; 322pp

ISBN: 9780143302476

Genres: humour, realistic fiction

Issues: bullying, divorce, family, friendship, gifted, relationships

Nigel Dorking is a knight in training, one who knows by heart all forty-one rules of the code of chivalry. Academically, he is in the 98th percentile and proud of it. He has an unusually advanced (but not always accurate) vocabulary and is not afraid to use it. And he collects facts the way other boys collect football cards.

Surely, with his superior intellect, he'll be able to devise a way to rescue his father from the evil enchantress who seduced him from his family? Nigel sets about doing everything he can to remind his father of where he truly belongs. He even tries to convince his severely disabled brother, Ivan, to drop the act and demonstrate his true intelligence. Without much success, admittedly, but Nigel knows that a true knight never gives up on a quest - and his father is the Grail.

Both sad and very funny, this is a wonderful first novel from comedienne Mary-Anne Fahey (once known as Kylie Mole), in which she explores a boy's desperate need for the loving attention of his father - a father who relates better to plumbing than people. Nigel is not your average student and is constantly bullied at school, something he endures by clinging to his belief in his intellectual superiority and the code of chivalry.

But there's always someone with a bigger brain and Nigel finds that he needs more than endless minutiae to get him through his final year of primary school. Thankfully, there's Ray, his step-brother-to-be, as well as the annoyingly competitive Jeremy Fry.

Although the writing style is inclined to grate at times - the narrative voice is both pompous and verbose - this is actually a rather clever reflection of Nigel's personality and the way he all-unknowingly irritates those around him. As Nigel matures and develops greater awareness of himself and those around him, so does the narrative voice become (marginally) less convoluted.

Fun language to read aloud, though!