Alex has a story to tell. He just doesn’t know what kind it is yet.

He has a lot of the same concerns most of us do growing up – exams, puberty, and a punctuation obsession plus a little quantum mechanics – but lately, ever since his brain surgery, everyone in his life is behaving more than a little mysteriously. Maybe it’s adjusting to life after epilepsy or maybe it’s the pressure of his impending scholarship application, but Alex is starting to see the world through different eyes. He’s certain there’s something rotten at the heart of his parents’ marriage, and when his beloved hamster, Jaws 2, starts acting up as well, he decides it’s time to investigate.

Ostrich is the debut novel from Aldenham-born author and playwright Matt Greene, and the idea came to him when he was awaiting surgery himself.

“About four years ago I was going in for some minor knee reconstruction,“ says Alex, 28.

“I’d never been under any kind of anaesthetic before and it was something that I found quite affecting, to be honest. I hadn’t experienced that sense of total vulnerability before, or that sense of lost time between the moment you go under and the moment you wake up again, where anything could have happened to you and you’d be none the wiser. It’s hard not to wonder about it a bit.

“That idea grew in to Ostrich. I loved the idea of a narrator of a book being the one person who knows the least about what’s happened to them, and I liked the idea of the reader being a few steps ahead of the narrator.“

The voice of 12-year-old Alex just ‘popped up’ when Matt sat down to start writing the book, a couple of years after his surgery.

“His voice really appealed to me because I think age 12 was the last time I felt certain about how the world work,“ says Matt.

“I think as you get older you let more grey into your world view. There’s been a real re-emergence of young narrators in fiction in recent years, and I think that really does appeal to a writer – to write with a child’s complete authority and certainty, even if you’re quite often wrong about stuff.“

  • Ostrich is available now in hardback from Weidenfeld & Nicolson