Rating: 
Summary: A wonderful quick read
Review: What a charming little book. It grabs your interest right away, doesn't take long to read and is utterly charming. If you've ever had imaginary friends, or had kids who had imaginary friends, it's very fun to relate to.
Rating:
Summary: a terrific debut
Review: What a lovely, quirky, touching book. I read it in a couple of sittings and have already started buying copies to give to friends. Here are the basics. A girl in an Australian mining town has two imaginary friends named Pobby and Dingan. One day, her dad asks if he can take them out for the day--and he loses them! The girl is so overcome with sadness that she starts getting sicker and sicker. So her brother begs everyone in town to help him find Pobby and Dingan before his sister winds up in the hospital. Soon absolutely everyone is looking high and low for two kids who don't exist. There's a lot more to the novel--a court case, a funeral, etc--but you're better off coming to it as clean as possible. "Pobby and Dingan" is spare, funny, poignant--and wonderfully childlike. The novella's only 90 pages or so, but the publisher was right to print it alone, rather than as part of a short story collection. No one who reads "Pobby and Dingan" could ask for anything more.
Rating:
Summary: Absence really does make the heart grow fonder
Review: Without doubt his is an astonishing debut novel that I strongly compel you to rush out and buy today. Its so refreshing to discover such brilliant creativity, written in a genre outside that of twenty something writers all too often pre-occupied with their own city dweller neuroses. Set far, far away, in the real life opal-mining town of Lightning Ridge, New South Wales in contemporary Australia, from the very first words the reader is engaged in a great adventure that is difficult to put down from beginning to end. Revolving around the Williamson family, the story is narrated through the convincingly colloquial voice of our hero Ashmol Williamson, the only son of a weather beaten, hard up (but ever hopeful), tinny swilling opal miner, and his rather 'too good for this town' English wife. Pobby and Dingan are the imaginary friends of Ashmol's eight-year-old sister Kellyane -and they've just gone missing! As his sister begins to wither with worry, Ashmol realizes to put things right he must set out on a dual-purpose quest: To find the imaginary friends and therefore make his sister well again, and in doing so restore the good name of the Williamson family (which has taken a bit of a beating of late). To do this he must rally the whole town, and make them believe that the imaginary friends really do exist.If you are human, you will be seduced by the fairytale qualities of the narrative, and charmed by the endearing storyline. It is easy to allow all this to hypnotically wash over you, but in doing so you might come away with the impression that this is a kids' book. Far from it! On the surface this might appear to be the case, but dig a little deeper, and you will reveal what is actually a serious piece of literature that explores in many fascinating ways the theme of absence. Ordinarily, absence might be created by a deep sense of loss, and would be articulated with rather grey images and emotions of relentless mournful sorrow. What makes this book so special is that Ben Rice surpasses this predictable definition and shows us that absence touches many aspects of our lives, spiritually and physically. He does this by writing consistently good chapter after chapter of atmospheric scenes full of colour, humour, and some very eccentric local characters. A poet's discipline is at play, and it is true to say that not a single word is wasted on us. For this reason alone, dismiss spiteful criticism of this novella's length (less than 100 pages and only available in hardback) to say that it ought to be longer is absurd; as ridiculous as the idea of re-building Rachel Whiteread's Turner Prize winning House - The book is what it is, absorbing, moving, beautifully written and perfectly formed. I guarantee that if you buy it you will treasure it forever.
Rating: 
Summary: An elegant story
Review: Wonderfully quirky novella. Simply told and elegantly written, this is definitely a writer to watch. Rice has captured the essence of sibling love from a child's perspective and made it into a captivating fable.
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