Lucky Linderman is having a rough go of
it. Suffering tremendous violence at the hands of the local bully
while his disaffected parents seem to tune him out entirely, he
struggles with issues of his role, his manhood and his purpose.
School officials also turn a blind eye and put the emPHAsis on the
wrong sylLAble with their efforts. Extraordinarily vivid dreams
connect him with a grandfather lost decades ago in the Vietnam War
and mysterious ants surround his imagination like his own personal
pep squad. When things get really bad, his mother yanks him out of
town to stay with relatives who definitely don’t put the “fun”
in dysfunctional. All of this seems like it would make for a pretty
bleak, dark tale. While there are bleak and dark aspects to it,
Lucky’s 15 year-old snark and his grandfather’s wisdom takes this
from being a depressing story to a hopeful – and occasionally funny
– one. I’ve recently written a number of reviews of books where
I felt too much “randomness” kept the tales from pulling
together. In the case of this book, the randomness, and serious
weirdness, dominates … but all of these disparate elements have a
purpose, and the way the whole thing comes together is fairly
brilliant … enough to have me staying up late at night to finish
the book. Much like Libba Bray’s “Going Bovine” this is a
story that keeps you guessing as to where it is going. Is it
realistic fiction? Maybe. Is Lucky mentally unbalanced? Possibly.
Is there a fantastical element or two that don’t really seem clear
at first? Yes, definitely. It wasn’t the easiest book to get into
– the timeline swings wildly from Lucky’s previous year as a high
school Freshman to his present – a miserable summer – to his
long-ago past, when a dying grandmother charged him to find and bring
home his POW/MIA grandfather from a foreign jungle. Interspersed
with this are a series of lucid dreams chronicling Lucky’s growth
into maturity as he works to save his grandfather, who is an
ever-changing decrepit corpse-like figure with significant insight
into life. The dreams are symbolism, metaphor, whatever you want to
believe they are, but, like the ants, they are also a survival
mechanism Lucky needs to move himself forward. You can’t help but
like this young man, whose honesty, observations and forthright
comments make you want to reach out and pat him on the back. He
desperately wants to do the right thing but has been so deeply abused
that it nearly paralyzes him. All the other characters in the book
are written in complex ways as well. The adult figures, in
particular, are deeply flawed, but very human. The novel includes
lengthy appendices – an interview with the author conducted by
fellow Printz winner Paolo Bacigalupi; an excerpt of her next book,
“Ask the Passengers”; and a discussion guide. The discussion
questions are clearly geared towards classroom activities, but the
strong (realistic) language of the protagonist and the subjects
touched on, including rape, drug abuse, suicide and “The Vagina
Monologues” makes it doubtful that most teachers would select it as
a class novel. This is unfortunate, as the story is layered, more so
than most YA selections, and has not a single theme but a series of
them – all intertwined and impacting on each other. Perhaps the
discussion guide could be used with a bookclub? In any case, I not
only really liked this book, but I learned a lot more about the
military draft and the ground war in Vietnam – and I was alive back
then. I can only imagine how our students, who only read about the
war in history books, would appreciate Lucky’s insight on an event
he is both separated from yet inexorably
tied to. It is a rich book, with lots of “nuggets” to take away.
Lucky’s face is damaged in an attack and he notes that the scab
goes from looking like Ohio, to West Virginia, to Pennsylvania, etc.
This reinforces the reviewers comments that Lucky is in some ways an
“Everyman” that exists in all the high schools in America. In
one of the most poignant and prophetic
statements in the book, Lucky’s grandfather notes that the soldiers
in his war are so young that they learn to hate before they learn to
love. It is a powerful thought in a story replete with reflections
that are likely to touch you in some way. Brava, Ms. King. A job
very well done.
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