A chilling tale of conformity in small-town America

Fiction: . Weightless. By Sarah Bannan. Bloomsbury, €17. Reviewed by Sara Keating

Sarah Bannan’s debut novel is a book that every teenager should read. Picture: Bryan O’Brien
Sarah Bannan’s debut novel is a book that every teenager should read. Picture: Bryan O’Brien

Carolyn Lessing is the new girl in Adamsville, a small Christian town in Alabama, where everyone has known each other since childhood. Indeed, there hasn’t been a single new girl in the lifetime of the group of adolescents who narrate this chilling tale of bullying in the 21st century.

As they put it succinctly in the opening chapter: “Adamsville wasn’t ...