ALL THAT REMAINS

Grim, funny, poignant, exciting, irreverent, heartening, heartbreaking, and inescapably thought-provoking, these three stories feature teenagers helping each other over rough spots with friendship and respect. Each story begins with a death: in the first, two cousins’ efforts to keep the body of their aunt, an AIDS victim, out of the state’s institutional hands take macabre, hilarious turns; in the second, a jock and his orphaned, dweebish cousin beat the odds to find common ground; a trio of smart-mouthed golfers give a young woman what she needs to let go of her father—and his ashes—in the third. The voices here are distinct, the dialogue natural-sounding, and the storytelling, especially the sports action (Brooks can make even a round of golf suspenseful), superb. But what will stay longest with readers is the inner strength with which his characters face, and prove equal to, some of life’s hardest tests. Great reading from a great writer. (Fiction. 11-15)