It's Not All About YOU, Calma! is Barry Jonsberg's follow up to his successful young adult novel, Kiffo and the Pitbull and is just as entertaining and fun. Jonsberg has a talent for getting inside the head of his young female narrator, Calma Harrison, and it is the strong narrative voice that makes both novels so good. Calma is a self-confessed 'unreliable narrator', a fantastically opinionated girl who is forced in the course of the novel to confront some of her perceptions of the people around her. Calma has grown up a bit since Kiffo and the Pitbull- she now has a love interest and a minimum wage job at the local budget supermarket. She also has her dad to contend with; he's back on the scene after abandoning Calma and her mum several years earlier.
Jonsberg creates a strong sense of place in the novel, at times I could almost feel the steamy heat of Darwin as I read. He also writes very well about school and teachers, particularly English teachers, a result of his own teaching background. I'm not a big fan of comic novels (more on that in a future post), but Jonsberg bases his humour in believable characters and situations and I actually laughed out loud once or twice while reading this. I am looking forward to the next book in the 'Calma' series...
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