NO BONES

A young woman struggles with growing up in Belfast during the Troubles in this darkly humorous, sexually twisted debut. It starts off solidly as a coming-of-age story about Amelia Lovett, who spends her childhood playing with rubber bullets while her family dodges real ones in the ongoing battle between the Brits and the IRA. Amelia's dangerous road continues when she enters school and has to fight off some fellow schoolgirls after they start a riot. Once her brief academic career peters out, she immediately goes on the dole and begins to hit the local Belfast clubs. Real trouble creeps in when she begins displaying symptoms of anorexia, and it doesn't take long before living with her crazy family in the ongoing calamity that is Belfast sends her straight toward a full-blown breakdown. Burns does well in the early going as she captures the tainted innocence of Amelia's early childhood, but her narrative turns lurid during a lengthy passage describing how escapees from a mental home wind up in the middle of the fighting and then end up hanging out with Amelia. The chapters detailing her subsequent mental collapse are downright cartoonish, but the biggest problem is that Burns never really connects the character dots in Amelia's downfall, making the transformation from innocent child to party girl to mental patient seem disjointed and unreal. Burns shows flashes of talent in the early chapters, but the problems in the second half overshadow the early promise. (May)

Forecast:Norton has hopes of making Burns look like the next Roddy Doyle, but don't count on it yet—moments of black humor and adolescent angst do not a Paddy Clark make, and promotional plans for the title are on the slim side.