In the Young Adult novel Slice: Juicy Moments from My Impossible Life, you will meet Darcy Pele Franz Walker, a boy named after famous international footballers, but one who has no interest in the game. There is no death or sex (though Darcy wonders frequently about the latter). Nobody has cancer (though a friend’s father suffers a stroke). There are no divorced parents and no drug-taking (though binge-drinking is served with comic humiliation). There is mention of Shakespeare (but not enough to make Slice a novel for classroom dissection). There is a school camp, in which nobody gets lost and no wildlife is gratuitously harmed (though the class yobs behave like, well, yobs). And there is the girl, Audrey Benitez, smart, appealing and in no hurry to hang with the in-crowd. Darcy’s kind of girl.