The Boy with Two Heads

Gr 6–10—This very long and painful slog features Richard, a Year Six British boy who undergoes a trauma and grows a paranoid and hate-filled second head, and the subsequent fallout from his/their awful behavior. Mulligan includes several extended, horrid, foul, and bigoted rants in the context of the schizophrenic second head lashing out. The underlying source of discord is his/their sense of subjugation to adult authority, personified by the cartoonish manipulative mad scientist psychologist/neurologist who pretends to help Richard/Rikki while actually plotting to harvest his/their brain. This book starts as delightfully camp—Richard is growing a second head and everyone is trying to treat him/them as normal—but the nebulous metaphor about a kid warring with himself as he tries to make peace with loss quickly devolves into a disorganized mess of unpleasant incidents with a protagonist who is unlikable and difficult to relate to. In the final 100 pages, Mulligan finally pulls things back together for an adventure-filled, friendship-heavy grand escape sequence. Language and context throughout are heavily British, which may add an additional sense of loss-in-translation for American audiences.