Review: Great achievement
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 06 9, 2013
"The Watchman" by Matt Langford is an ambitious and daring book, told from the perspective of Adam,a 16 year old boy with severe learning difficulties. He has his own words and almost language but for the benefit of the reader the words - as his surroundings uses them - are included, giving us a slight advantage over Adam.The story is moving and achieves easily its main goal, to change our perspective and see for ourselves, or at least imagine what it might be like in Adam's head; the problems and challenges he faces on a daily basis and those when there are bigger changes to his family's circumstances.I felt deeply touched by the story, seeing how the family is sometimes brilliant and at other times unable to communicate with Adam and to adapt to a life with a child so hard to maintain.Having worked in the environment of special care myself (a long time ago) I felt the descriptions of conflicts and problems very accurate and carefully portrayed. The way certain things are left unexplained hits home the point of Adam's perspective.This is a read you won't easily forget and one that carries some importance to raise more awareness of those who are not like everybody else.