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
Third in a series of books (The Tuesday Cafe, 1998, not reviewed, etc.) set in Canada, featuring 16-year-old Harper Winslow from a suburb of Edmonton. Harper is pleasantly surprised when his conventional mother says she’s sending him to a camp for young writers. The first person he meets at camp is Mickey Taylor, enthusiastic but goofy, whose twin sister, Sunny, and father are vacationing in a nearby cabin. From the first, Harper loves everything about Sunny, and their relationship continues after camp is over. The Taylors are everything Harper’s family is not: Mickey and Sunny are schooled at home, their mother is a freelance writer, and the atmosphere in their house is relaxed. The comedy in this tale comes from Harper’s attempts to conceal his lack of romantic experience from Sunny, culminating in a very funny scene in which she repeats his fabrications about mythical former girlfriends to the Winslows. Trembath’s refreshing tale wrings from a boy’s dating foibles some genuinely tender scenes; when it looks as if Sunny might go away for a year to attend art school, Harper lands with a bump and struggles with his feelings. His first-person narrative is natural-sounding and engaging, and readers will relish this story of first love from, for a change, a boy’s perspective. (Fiction. 12-16)
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1999
ISBN: 1-55143-121-1
Page Count: 190
Publisher: Orca
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1999
BOOK REVIEW
A slender doggy tale from Auster, who lately seems more concerned with providing product (and making movies) than matching the high standards of his earlier literary work (for example, Leviathan, 1992). This newest fiction, written from a dog’s point of view, smells suspiciously like a bid for domestic bestsellerdom. The sappy opening flirts with kitsch, but Auster’s light, transparent, fluid prose redeems it somewhat, particularly after we meet Mr. Bones’s master. Willy Christmas is a logomaniacal drunk who lost his mind in 1968 while a student at Columbia, where he cultivated an image as an “outlaw poet” and indulged heavily in mind-altering drugs. A Brooklyn public-school prodigy nurtured by his high- school English teacher (shades of Henry Roth), Willy was born William Gurevitch but changed his named after Santa Claus spoke through the TV set and convinced him to pursue an itinerant life as a do-gooder. Wandering across the country with Mr. Bones, Willy veers between being a “bedraggled, demented pain in the ass” and, when he’s in his right mind, acting as Santa’s saintly helper. He has also scribbled in 74 notebooks over the last 23 years and, fearing the end, takes Mr. Bones with him to Baltimore in hopes of handing dog and notebooks over to his long-lost teacher. Auster’s portrait of this latter-day Joe Gould takes a sharp turn into mush with Willy’s demise. Mr. Bones spends a season with a lonely Chinese boy, then finds a loving home (complete with pretty Mom and adorable kids) in suburban Virginia, where he ends his days dreaming of Timbuktu—his notion of an afterlife. Loyal Auster readers may feel betrayed by this slim novel, which contains little that would put off readers of shlock in the Nicholas Sparks/Robert James Waller vein. The wordplay is embarrassingly commonplace (dog/God, Santa/Satan), and the dog jokes are TV-quality. Shockingly bad, especially for someone of Auster’s stature.
Pub Date: May 1, 1999
ISBN: 0-8050-5407-3
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 1999
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