A lovely and odd take on a time many of us would just as soon forget.
Peter is an average eighth grader, except that his nipples are speaking to him.
It must be said that newcomer Francis has found one of the more ingenious, bizarre, and creepily affecting metaphors for this time of life. At the beginning of eighth grade, Peter Paddington—already a few strikes behind in the popularity game, being overweight and chronically insecure—has a new problem to contend with: his nipples have popped out. They were now “round and puffy and not the two pink raisins they used to be.” Not only that, but the nipples are also speaking to him, telling him not to be such a wuss, stand up for himself, and all those things that scared young boys hate to hear. Terrified that people will notice the change in his body, Peter wraps tape around his chest to keep things hidden. Everything that’s going on with Peter—from his nipples to the hair that keeps sprouting horridly all over his body and the powerful feelings he has for the handsome and much more popular Andrew Sinclair—is perfectly normal, of course, but to a frightened and lonely teenager it’s like living inside a bad horror movie. All this could be helped if Peter had anybody to talk to about things, but his only real friend is Daniela from across the street, who’s too busy raging against her parents to pay Peter any mind. His smothering mother keeps imploring him to go make a “boy friend,” and his sympathetic father is hardly the communicative type, leaving Peter to sort himself out. Francis has a true gift for the roiling mental interior of adolescence, and his refusal to cop out with false dramatics makes this an uncommonly honest piece of work.
A lovely and odd take on a time many of us would just as soon forget.Pub Date: Aug. 20, 2004
ISBN: 1-931561-76-1
Page Count: 284
Publisher: MacAdam/Cage
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2004
Aspiring filmmaker/first-novelist Chbosky adds an upbeat ending to a tale of teenaged angst—the right combination of realism and uplift to allow it on high school reading lists, though some might object to the sexuality, drinking, and dope-smoking. More sophisticated readers might object to the rip-off of Salinger, though Chbosky pays homage by having his protagonist read Catcher in the Rye. Like Holden, Charlie oozes sincerity, rails against celebrity phoniness, and feels an extraliterary bond with his favorite writers (Harper Lee, Fitzgerald, Kerouac, Ayn Rand, etc.). But Charlie’s no rich kid: the third child in a middle-class family, he attends public school in western Pennsylvania, has an older brother who plays football at Penn State, and an older sister who worries about boys a lot. An epistolary novel addressed to an anonymous “friend,” Charlie’s letters cover his first year in high school, a time haunted by the recent suicide of his best friend. Always quick to shed tears, Charlie also feels guilty about the death of his Aunt Helen, a troubled woman who lived with Charlie’s family at the time of her fatal car wreck. Though he begins as a friendless observer, Charlie is soon pals with seniors Patrick and Sam (for Samantha), stepsiblings who include Charlie in their circle, where he smokes pot for the first time, drops acid, and falls madly in love with the inaccessible Sam. His first relationship ends miserably because Charlie remains compulsively honest, though he proves a loyal friend (to Patrick when he’s gay-bashed) and brother (when his sister needs an abortion). Depressed when all his friends prepare for college, Charlie has a catatonic breakdown, which resolves itself neatly and reveals a long-repressed truth about Aunt Helen. A plain-written narrative suggesting that passivity, and thinking too much, lead to confusion and anxiety. Perhaps the folks at (co-publisher) MTV see the synergy here with Daria or any number of videos by the sensitive singer-songwriters they feature.
Pub Date: Feb. 4, 1999
ISBN: 0-671-02734-4
Page Count: 256
Publisher: MTV Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes...
In a riveting novel from Myers (At Her Majesty’s Request, 1999, etc.), a teenager who dreams of being a filmmaker writes the story of his trial for felony murder in the form of a movie script, with journal entries after each day’s action.
Steve is accused of being an accomplice in the robbery and murder of a drug store owner. As he goes through his trial, returning each night to a prison where most nights he can hear other inmates being beaten and raped, he reviews the events leading to this point in his life. Although Steve is eventually acquitted, Myers leaves it up to readers to decide for themselves on his protagonist’s guilt or innocence.
The format of this taut and moving drama forcefully regulates the pacing; breathless, edge-of-the-seat courtroom scenes written entirely in dialogue alternate with thoughtful, introspective journal entries that offer a sense of Steve’s terror and confusion, and that deftly demonstrate Myers’s point: the road from innocence to trouble is comprised of small, almost invisible steps, each involving an experience in which a “positive moral decision” was not made. (Fiction. 12-14)Pub Date: May 31, 1999
ISBN: 0-06-028077-8
Page Count: 280
Publisher: HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1999
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