Welcome to Litsy!

Everyone's going to be talking about The Pause, the new novel from award-winning author John Larkin. Declan O'Malley is seventeen, and attends a selective high school with his friends Chris and Maaaate. Despite being the uber nerd in primary school, he's now extremely good looking. The world is at his feet. Declan meets Lisa Leong on the train station. Their developing relationship must be kept secret because of their different cultural backgrounds - Lisa is Australian Born Chinese - and because Lisa's parents would not approve. Lisa's mother wants what's best for her daughter - without ever asking Lisa what she wants. When Lisa starts skipping youth group to be with Declan, her mother does everything in her power to break up their relationship - she sends Lisa to live with her aunt in Hong Kong. Unable to bear the agony of the breakup, and with no contact coming from Lisa, Declan sees no way out of the bleakness that has become his existence. He pauses on the train station. Then he acts. He throws himself in front of a train. Although he is killed, his essence lives on temporarily. He is not in heaven, or hell, it's a non-place; a featureless wasteland. It is in this form that he narrates The Pause. Forced to witness the impact that his suicide has on his family, his friends and Lisa, Declan has to bear witness to the life he might have lived had he stuck around. For the life he would have led is played out in a parallel reality.