A Book Review

Cameron is an aimless, sarcastic stoner who is alienated from his family and has no real friends of which to speak. When he starts having hallucinations and loses control of his body a couple of times, everyone assumes he must be using hallucinogenic drugs. Not true: after getting fired from Buddha Burger, getting suspended from school, being forced into therapy by his parents, and having a run-in with a flaming toaster oven, he is finally diagnosed with Creutzfeldt-Jakob (a.k.a. “Mad Cow”) disease. It will deteriorate his brain and kill him.

It is at this point when things get interesting. A pink-haired punker angel, complete with combat boots, torn fishnets, and actual feather wings spray-painted with graffiti, appears to Cameron in his hospital room. She urges Cameron to escape the hospital and undertake a quest to find the mysterious Dr. X, a traveler through dimensions who has inadvertently brought dark energy back with him to our universe. It is this dark energy that is attacking Cameron’s brain, not Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and if he can find Dr. X and get him to close up the wormhole, he will not only find a cure for himself but save the universe!

What follows is a kaleidoscopic adventure full of quirky characters and a million plot twists and details. The book is stuffed with a mess of references, touching on everything from Norse mythology to Star Wars, quantum mechanics to MTV Spring Break. Best of all, some of the hippest “references,” such as the legendary mystical free jazz trumpet player Junior Webster, are actually entirely made up by the author. While the book at times reads like both a Percy Jackson title for the 17+ crowd and Paper Towns on acid, Don Quixote looms large in the background and the idea of living out one’s life in a week’s time hearkens back to Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Hilarious, weird, life affirming, surreal and ironic, above all Going Bovine is just a whole lot of wacky fun. (four stars)

[Flags: this book depicts drug use, pervasive profanity, and an irresponsible and somewhat ridiculous teenage fantasy sex scene. I hate sex scenes in books in general, and this one specifically knocks a half-point off my rating and makes it a definite “high school only” title. But really, if a dying teenage boy actually is dreaming his way through the end of his life, among other things of course he is going to dream himself up some sex, so maybe it can be forgiven?]

Going Bovine
Written by Libba Bray
Delacorte Books for Young Readers
496 pages
ISBN: 978-0385733977
Release Date: 22 September 2009
GoingBovine.com
Libba Bray – Official Website

A Book Review

Rebelling against the structure and strictures of the traditional coming-of-age novel (with the very first sentence the narrator informs us that he’s not going to go into “all that David Copperfield kind of crap,”) this book instead gives us an unfiltered, uncensored and un-”adult”-erated flash into the life and brain of teenager Holden Caulfield as he wanders around New York City for a couple of days and nights after being kicked out of yet another prep school, not ready to go home and face his parents.  There is no epic adventure or crisis, we are simply pulled in by Holden’s hilarious, confessional narration, which from page to page is obnoxious, insightful, vulgar, sensitive, spazzy, intelligent, depressed, distracted and empathetic. Above all, Holden seems to be in search of integrity both in himself and in the world at large; he constantly rails against “phoniness” wherever he sees it. Salinger captures adolescent confusion and detachment like no one before probably ever had; we are right with Holden as he wrestles with his confusion over love, sex and the hypocrisy and evil of the world. Rather than showing us the boy growing into a man, we are thrust into a very vivid moment right in midst of the “growth,” and are left to conjecture what will ultimately become of our narrator.

Comparing it to my recent reading, it seems that much of contemporary adolescent literature is heavily indebted to this book; everyone from John Green’s narrators in Looking for Alaska and Paper Towns to Neal Shusterman’s Antsy Bonano,  Marcelo of Marcelo in the Real World and the narrator of The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao seem to be taking at least some of their cues from Holden Caulfield.  It may just be that Salinger was so remarkably successful at creating an authentic teenage voice that subsequent teenage voices in more recent works remind one of Holden’s voice.  This preeminence will make Catcher in the Rye feel very familiar to readers of today’s YA fiction, but still occasionally shock in its frankness.

Something must be said in regards to the explicit language in the book; although it certainly is full of it, any reader that becomes fixated on its inappropriateness has completely missed the point.  The narrator simply has the guts to describe real and pervasive dialogue and circumstances that some people would want cut out.  Again, this speaks directly to Holden’s desire for integrity; to censor anything real because it might shock or offend would be supremely phony.  Furthermore, much of the power of the book comes as we recognize how troubled he is by these compromising circumstances and moral quandaries.  His oftentimes empathetic reactions to such situations are extremely insightful.

I’m not exactly sure if this is a book that needs much more hyping.  Almost sixty years after its first publication it is still moving more units than many books ever do at the height of their publicity cycles.  Clearly it is well known, and a lot of the kids are hip to it.  Still, I don’t think this book can be recommended enough.  This is a masterful and influential piece of literature that works as well as a high-interest read for teenagers as it does as a text for serious literary study.  Every high school library should have this book on their shelves, and it should probably be displayed because the students will pick it up; don’t make them go to the public library for it.  This is a tried and true classic that has only increased in relevance since its publication.

A Book Review

Marcelo is looking forward to his coming summer job as caretaker of the therapy ponies at Paterson, a special school for children with disabilities which he himself has attended for years.  He is an intelligent but sheltered teenager with a condition that places him on the Autism spectrum.   However, Marcelo’s father, wanting him to gain experience in the “real world,” pushes him into a job in the mail room of his Boston corporate law firm.  If he isn’t successful at the mailroom job and at following what his father terms “the rules of the real world,” he will be required to go to a regular high school for his senior year rather than his beloved Paterson.  And so the reader is thrust with Marcelo into the competitive, confusing and relativistic world of the law firm, viewing it all through his fresh eyes.

It is absolutely riveting to follow Marcelo’s thoughts as he confronts the politics, deceptions, and evils that surround him in the law firm and begins to wrestle with what is right and wrong and how he should conduct his life.  His observations and occasional misapprehensions of the words and actions of those who surround him are by turns humorous and startlingly insightful.  At times the reader is almost embarrassed at Marcelo’s naivety, only to be dumbfounded seconds later by his deft and logical breakdown of a common perplexity of human behavior.  The reader should not have any problem identifying with this character; his autistic-based obsessions and limitations come to seem not so different from those of anyone else in the story or in real life.  His social shortcomings are countered by great perception and moral aptitude.  A lot of credit should be given to the author for creating such a breathing character.

In a day when many young adult books deal with sex in an extremely casual manner, this book is refreshing and courageous for intelligently suggesting that such casual sex may actually be emotionally and spiritually destructive, and making cogent arguments for sexual morality and high ethics in general.  The book is also courageous for bringing religion to bear in these moral arguments in a sophisticated and respectful way; Marcelo is extremely interested in religion and God, and both leans upon and questions his religious knowledge as he is confronted with moral quandaries at the law firm.

Filled with believable characters, realistic situations, beautiful metaphors and stunning ideas, this is a brave, masterful, coming-of-age novel that is a likely contender for the major young adult awards of the coming year.

Marcelo in the Real World
Written by Francisco X. Stork
Arthur A. Levine / Scholastic
315 pages
ISBN: 978-0-545-05474-4
Release Date: Mar 2009
franciscostork.com