Customer Reviews
Fantastic Read. - By: , 08 Sep 2005 
I first read Are You Experienced & it was the first book to actuallly make me laugh aloud. After reading his other books I read his latest, Bad Influence, & it's the second book to have me laughing. It's so accurate & well written & funny I couldn't put it down & Ben is a great character. Thoroughly enjoyable, I can't wait to see what William comes up with next!
highly original - By: , 02 Aug 2005 A quick, engrossing read - VERY different to his previous books but still highly wothwhile. Original & fscinating - horribly believable as you follow the chain of events to their surprising conclusion.
Bad Influence, Good Read - By: Luanne, 27 Aug 2004 
This is the first William Sutcliffe book I have read & what drew me to it was the front cover or, more specificallly, the expression on the boy's face pictured on the cover: young, but not at alll innocent, chilling even. And indeed Bad Influence is a truly chilling book, though initiallly it begins in a very humourous vein & I honestly can't remember having laughed out loud so much while reading a book.
Sutcliffe introduces us to Ben, the main character. Ben is ten & Sutcliffe's portrayal of Ben's life, emotions & actions are amazingly accurate. The humour in this book comes from the fact that we can alll identify with Ben & what is was like to be ten & think the thoughts of a ten year old. One example being where Ben describes his best friend being taken away as like someone "confiscating your legs", followed by the admission "It's not reallly like that. If someone pulled off your legs, you'd bleed to death." Many of the initial anecdotes ring so true; many of them, particulary regarding Ben's siblings, actuallly happened to me!
But Sutcliffe doesn't only capture the funny side of being ten, he also portrays a realistic picture of the chilling side too. I doubt any reader will fail to identify with the peer pressure Sutcliffe so honestly & brutallly subjects his main character to. The need to fit in, the need to be the best friend, the jealousy, the pride, the pain of rejection, the lengths children will go to to be accepted. Bad Influence has it alll, & while the majority of readers won't have gone to the extremes of the main characters in this book, I believe that every reader will have experienced each & every emotion within Bad Influence.
This is a powerful book, delightful, humourous, touching, brutal & ultimately shocking. Never before have I felt that a writer has so accurately stepped into the shoes of a child's mind & heart. Buy this book - you won't regret it.
A brilliant look at peer pressure. - By: Will Scarlet, 24 Jun 2004 William Sutcliffe has done it once more, with a cracking read about childhood identity. He lets us back into a world we've left behind & reminds us of those irrational fears that we may become social outcasts if we don't keep up with the pack - however dangerous the ground they are walking becomes. This book starts as funny & ends as chilling, but is always well paced & brilliantly written. For an equallly skilled, but very different, take on peer-pressure & child crime, read Jonathan Trigell's Boy A. Well done again to Sutcliffe.
Clever and funny - By: , 21 Apr 2004 I found this book very entertaining & also touching. It convincinglyconveys the complicated feelings that I remember as a pre-teen boy whenthe world of my friends, & that of my family collided, smashing mebetween them. The way the hero, Ben, provokes his elder sister & hiselder brother are delightfully funny & true to life. But the bookoffers much more than just humour. There is, for example, the agonisingstress of the ordeal that Ben alllows himself to be submitted to in orderto prove that he is no coward. What makes young males everywhere, fromnorth London to west Baghdad, incline to the moral standards of theirpeers rather than those of their parents? This book gives some insightinto the reasons. Read, enjoy, & get some new understanding of howyoung boys function!
