This novel was heading toward a 4 star rating. Until the ending.

I really enjoyed the story of how Bri was coping with the difficulties in his life, his issues with his parents, his new job, and his newfound relationship with Emma. It was interesting and it felt true-to-life.

But this story ends abruptly at a climactic point and we are left hanging. It feels very unfinished. There is no conclusion. There is not even a hint of a conclusion. It just ends at a very strange point. It feels very unfinished. ( )

Brian is 17 and his parents have split up. He lives with his mum in the house, while his Dad lives out the back in the shed. He’s left school and has started his first job working nights. Brian struggles with his mum who is suffering from Bi Polar disorder. How does he care for her, get his first girlfriend and start a job all at once.

Gripping ending; Brian has convinced the Doctor to let his mother into a private hospital even though they don’t have insurance. As they leave, the Doctor rings to say the bed is gone. Brian drives on – to where?

Good to pair with ‘T he Opposite of Music’ (Janet Ruth Young) ( )

‘No worries’. It’s a great Australian saying. Brian Talbot would like no worries, but when you’re seventeen and just left school these days, it seems worries is all you have.

The ‘family next door’ is thrown out the window in this book and Condon deals with some real life social issues as he lovingly hand feeds us on Brian’s doubts and desires until our empathy becomes over-whelming.
Coping with a new job and work-mates is one thing, but Bri has other, more pressing distractions that would send most kids over the wall. His father, for one, who decides family life (especially his own) is not to his liking and distances himself from them by moving into the back shed. And his mother is a walking time bomb that Brian spends a great deal of his time trying to defuse. Throw in a girl who sends his pulse racing and gives him x-rated daydreams and we have an ordinary kid coping with some extra ordinary pressures.
Condon has done his research and come up with some believable teenagers in today’s society. No Worries lays out several of the problems that are currently being handled by many youths today and the title seems to be a hint at simpler times when the basic family unit was not something the average kid had to wish for.

After being through so much with Bri, in the end I would have liked a little more closure. Let’s face it, if it was a girl she would have at least ended with a diary entry! But then again, it is typical of a teenage boy not to communicate, is it not? ( )

Bri (Brian) is 17 and has just left school to start the night shift at a dairy. Here he meets 3 knockabout blokes who’s antics transport him away from the worries of looking after his manic depressive mother. His father lives in a shed at the bottom of the garden and does not provide much support. Then there’s his school friend Emma, who he has fallen in love with, but she wants to be friends because she is about to go on an exchange to Canada.This is a heart wrenching novel as Bri’s mother deteriorates and tries to kill herself and the end is gutwrenching.The driving test – where his mother goes crazy.