This week’s featured book certainly packs a punch! When we hurriedly gave out the books for Shadowing, on the last day in school, and Archie took Patron Saint of Nothing, he told me it wasn’t what he would normally read but “he’d give it a go”.  A week later, he emailed me with a one-word response – “PHENOMENAL”. Immediately, I wanted to read it too – such is the nature of Carnegie Shadowing.  I leave Archie to tell you about the book:

Saint of Nothing by Randy Ribay

Jay Reguero plans to spend the summer playing video games before heading to university in the autumn. But when he discovers that his Filipino cousin, Jun, has been murdered as part of President Duterte’s war on drugs, and no one in the family wants to talk about what happened, Jay travels to the Philippines to find out the real story.  Hoping to uncover more about Jun and the events that led to his death, Jay is forced to reckon with the many sides of his cousin before he can face the whole horrible truth – and the part he played in it.

What Bushey Meads Shadowers say:

“Recently, as part of 2020 Carnegie Shadowing, I read the book Patron Saints of Nothing. It is an engrossing display of culture, family and justice and I enjoyed it immensely. The plot is brilliantly thought-provoking and emotional and the characters are extremely deep and well-written. For example, Tito Manning’s character is immediately clear even from one of the first sentences he is in. ‘He’s at the head of the table, looming like a volcano’. This already shows his dominance and antagonistic attitude. I feel that this shows that the author, Randy Ribay, has a perfect vision of how he wants his characters to come across.

Besides from that, the mystery element of the novel is tense and moving, making the story travel across the Philippines with a heart-breaking outcome. This book also taught me of a serious issue – President Duterte’s war on drugs – raging on in the Philippines which shocked me that I had not heard about it before.

Overall, I honestly was surprised that I enjoyed Patron Saints Of Nothing this much as the basis of the book actually is a coming of age novel, yet I always read fantasy such as Neil Gaiman. For the author to create a novel totally away from what I normally like to read and yet for me to love it shows how truly talented Randy Ribay is.”

Archie Coffer, 7Elm

Mrs Turton