Six Impossible Things by Fiona Wood

Fourteen-year-old Dan Cereil’s life couldn’t be more upside down. Not only has his father come out of the closet but he’s left Dan and his mum to move house and find another source of income after his company folded and he’s moved out. Luckily it would seem Dan’s great aunt Adelaide has just so conveniently died leaving them her historic home. Unfortunately it’s in various states of disrepair and needs to be refitted for his mother’s new wedding cake business. Compounded by Dan’s geeky and shy tendencies and his hopeless crush on the girl next door, Dan is doomed to never fit in at his new school. Being the straight, honest yet hopeful guy that he is, Dan has boiled down his life to six impossible things that may or may not turn out to be so impossible to achieve after all.

Loosely based on the story of Cinderella, Six Impossible Things is a cute, fun, lighthearted and readable novel. It was not only Dan’s witty, dry sarcasm and his bullet-pointed lists that made it likable and easy to fall into but also Fiona Wood’s concise, popping prose. The writing stood out as both effortless and striking, read with ease until you come across one of the many witty one-liners that stops and strikes you with its brilliance. As an experienced TV scriptwriter, Wood pens these so well. Some of my favorites from early on:

“Guys, please, one life-changing shock at a time.”

‘She’s going to be making wedding cakes. It wouldn’t occur to everyone in the throes of a marriage breakdown, but we do irony in this house in addition to sarcasm.”

“My mother didn’t obviously hear my agonized moaning over Radiohead’s agonized moaning or I’m sure she would have been upstairs in a flash.”

Further on I began to notice that many of these lines ended a chapter or started a new one and I looked forward to them with pleasure. From the get-go Dan is hard not to like. He’s geeky and kind and thoughtless and unexpected. His hopeful self-deprecation is endearing and makes his awkward encounters at school and his struggles to make his mom happy ever entertaining. A laugh-out-loud passage between Dan and the bully Jayzo:

He sits down groaning. We’re both panting and drenched in sweat.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

A sound escapes his blood covered lips. It couldn’t be, could it? A snort of laughter?

“You wimp, you don’t ask the guy you’re bashing if he’s ‘okay’,” he says.

“Not really, no.” I say.

I take off my shirt and hand it to him. He balls it up and sticks it under his nose.

“I’d keep going, only I’m a bleeder,” he says.

“That’s fine,” I say. I’m alive, and it feels like a miracle.

“That was a lucky punch for a loser like you,” he says. “You can’t fight for shit.”

“I know.”

As you can tell Wood also has a knack for writing dialogue that just shines. Dan makes light of absolutely everything, especially the fortune reversal that is his life. While this makes the novel easy to read, mid-way through I didn’t feel a real urgency to finish the book, I wanted him to take his problems more seriously at times. But Dan is 14 years old so his reaction to weighty topics such as his dad’s sexuality, his divorced mother’s mental state, and their lack of income is natural and appropriate. I’m glad I kept on reading because the ending was sweet and just as it should be. Six Impossible Things is recommended for fans of quirky writing, younger YA, modern happily ever afters and retellings.

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