A Book Review of ‘Noughts and Crosses’

Malorie Blackman’s ‘Noughts and Crosses’ is a novel of a dystopian world mirroring the segregation of Africa and America. Yet, despite the pseudo-apartheid society, Romeo-and-Juliet-esque romance blossoms between Sephy and Callum. Will the affluent ‘Crosses’ and the poor ‘Noughts’ join? Or shall it be far worse?

I feel that Blackman’s novel holds of a distorting mirror to the segregated world to great effect. The many sub-plots within this novel intrigue the reader, following both ‘Nought’ Callum’s life and ‘Cross’ Sephy’s. Yet the whole selection of plots coalesce into a fully-fledged plot, especially with the dual-narrative style, is testament to blackman’s immense skill. Indeed, Malorie has given many characters a deep persona and background, especially demonstrated in the run up to a court case.

On the other hand, there was little interest for the first ~100 pages of the book an much of it was a filler for the court case. This givs a rathr slow start and needs an increase of pace, otherwise many readers may miss out on the end of the story. Moreover, some of the end plot was jumpy and left one character’s story for another’s, leaving the reader confused and disoriented.

Overall, I feel this is a masterful book of high quality, yet its violent and sexual content ought to give it a minimum age of 13. I would recommend it to any serious reader and I would give this 7.5 out of 10.

Daniel Cropper, 9CVC.