Ballad of Ronan McCoy

The instant Sunday Times bestseller''A painfully optimistic book that does the favour of making you laugh as it breaks your heart'' Kenneth Branagh''A tender, elegant novel about the beauty and importance of friendship…One of the most moving books I’ve read in some time'' John Boyne***Brendan''s best friend, his only friend, is Ronan McCoy. He knows things about Brendan that no one else does: about his job washing the cars at Feeney’s Funeral Home, about the loneliness he sometimes feels even when surrounded by hundreds of others at school. But Brendan never told Ronan about the dark feeling that sits at the bottom of his stomach, the feeling that tells him something bad is coming. It never comes when Ronan''s around.Ronan is smart and sporty and popular, totally comfortable in his own skin: all the things that Brendan himself isn''t. But Ronan always makes him feel like a good friend, a good person, a better Brendan.Standing at the school gates on the first day of term, the dark