'Asboville' is the story of JB, a disaffected teenager from London who finds himself - under threat of harsher penalties - living in a caravan with his gruff uncle in a less than glamorous seaside town. Under the terms of his ASBO, he is obliged to paint beach huts all day, and be back in the caravan by seven o'clock every night. He doesn't take to it easily, but he does take to it, despite the dangerous distraction of the local teen gang and the less dangerous, but just as unsettling, appearance of Sal, a local girl with problems of her own.

'Asboville', for me, was a bit of a slow burner and, whilst it's readable from the outset, it took me a little while to get into it. I also found myself distracted during some of the early pages by the occasionally less than convincing attention to detail. However, it wasn't too long before I was drawn into the increasingly engaging plot - laced with a little mystery here and there - and 'Asboville' then claimed that highest of honours: it became a book that the reader really doesn't want to put down. The beach hut painting idea, which at first glance seems a fairly mundane one, is very skilfully manipulated and, together with his use of Sal, Rhodes offers subtle confirmation of Freud's assertion that love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.

All of this makes 'Asboville' sound very much like a book for adults, and indeed it is. But Rhodes knows his subject, and his insights into the minds of teenagers in a fractured society have both authenticity and the potential (in the way that only a good novel can have) for instruction and enlightenment. My son is fifteen years old. If I could get him to read anything at all, I'd get him to read this. ( )