A portrait of the realistic bravado of teens struggling to find their place in the world.
This coming-of-age story, set in present-day Florida, may leave adult readers with a sad view of today’s teens but engage the younger crowd.
Robby Meyers is the youngest of his clan, and has always been the weakest as well, due to his premature birth. Now, at the beginning of high school, he’s experiencing puberty and is possibly more vulnerable than ever. His father is Robby’s cheerleader–he encourages him to keep up with his healthy, athletic older brothers, and Robby does his best, despite his mother’s concerns about his easily-injured body. When their father is killed in a motorcycle accident, the entire Meyers family’s world turns upside-down. When they later move to a new city, Robby experiences the pain of leaving his friends, teasing and other difficulties with new classmates, in addition to unsympathetic coaches. Still, he makes several new friends who’ll have a large impact on his life. Seemingly largely unsupervised by his mother or other adults, Robby partakes in some activities that demonstrate the questionable judgment that might be expected of a teen in turmoil, including smoking and drinking as well as obnoxious behavior to adults, including teachers. His friend Danny has coarse manners, a shockingly unsanitary home and a bad relationship with his uncle, but Robby doesn’t realize how dangerous the situation is until the climax of the story, in which Robby goes with him to a planned meeting in the dark of night. Readers learn from the epilogue whether Robby survives the ordeal, but the story ends abruptly and there is no demonstration that the other characters have learned important lessons. Appropriate for young readers who don’t mind rough language, Robby Fights the World is engaging and demonstrates making good decisions without moralizing, though it’s possible that as many bad lessons as good are included. Still, the book will likely feel authentic to teen readers.
A portrait of the realistic bravado of teens struggling to find their place in the world.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4392-5913-9
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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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