MONDAYS ARE RED

Luke Patterson, the 14-year-old narrator of this debut from a British author, wakes up from a bout of meningitis to find his senses jumbled together: "I was seeing music and smelling colors and tasting what my fingers told me." Attempting to convey Luke's synesthesia, Morgan unspools frequently belabored prose ("buttery flute music spread over my face"; "from the ends of my fingers fluttered peppermint butterflies"); even poetry aficionados may grow weary of the heavy-handed narration. Luke also hears a voice in his head, that of the devil Dreeg, who tempts this Faust with the ability to fly—and to take revenge on his hated sister, Laura. Then Luke discovers that his mental powers can shape the outside world: a horror story he writes for a class starts to come true. Before long Laura is facing mortal danger in a climax that, overloaded with dark imagery, feels almost like a reprise of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. The prose becomes something of a quagmire here, dragging down the characters and the story line, and Morgan's message seems markedly mixed. She paints synesthesia as a nauseating experience—indeed, she never differentiates it from the devil-on-the-shoulder—but goes on in an afterword to wax poetic about the condition as the background to "a life that, it seems to me, must be richer than mine." Ages 12-up. (Oct.)