It begins with the dramatic line "Everybody hates me." The author then proceeds to take us on a journey written in the first person from the point-of-view of Tao Symonds, the eleven year old narrator and central character, as he reflects on the previous few months of his life. Tao thinks the whole world is against him. He is suffering pressure from school, his parents and their new partners, as well as from his peers to join in theirescapades and to top it all off, his dog has died. Tao feels confused and angry because his parents, middle aged surfer father, Greg, and his mother, a teacher called Christine, are in the process of a break-up. Tao then lists his troubles and tells the reader of his present dread as he is taken by his mother to meet Mr. Petrovic, a Croatian immigrant, to apologize for something he says is not his fault, at least not entirely his fault. Through the use of past and present tense, Colin Bowles complicates the plot telling us in Tao's view how it all started.…