Six animals live inside Jim's brain. They're all trying to run his life.

London, 1978. A middle grade novel about an eleven-year-old boy, his gang, his family, and the six animals living inside his brain who can't agree on who he should be.

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Epigraphs

W Somerset Maugham, reflecting in A Writer’s Notebook (1949): 'I recognise that I am made up of several persons and that the person that at the moment has the upper hand will inevitably give place to another. But which is the real one? All of them or none?'

Themes

‘Nor do we have the faintest clue about the biggest mystery of all – how does a lump of wet grey matter produce the conscious experience you are having right now, reading this paragraph? How come the brain gives rise to the mind? No one knows.’

‘Compassion,’ wrote historian Karen Armstrong in considering the proper meaning of the Golden Rule, ‘asks us to look into our own hearts, discover what gives us pain, and then refuse, under any circumstance whatsoever, to inflict that pain on anybody else.’ This is a lovely expression of the plot of Hamster Head.

What most of us still call ‘our conscious thoughts’ are really like dolphins in our mind, jumping briefly out of the ocean of our unconscious for a short period before they submerge themselves once again.

Synopsis

Explore a world of diverse genres beyond 'Hamster Head', ranging from mysteries and thrillers to romance and fantasy, handpicked to satisfy every reader's craving.