The version I read had a “Pulitzer Prize nominee” sticker on the cover. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This book — you’ll notice I’ve categorized it as both fiction and non — is a memoir-ish account of the few years in the author’s life after both his parents die of cancer and he’s left to take care of his younger brother. Not something I could imagine dealing with in my early twenties, but he handles it as well as he can.
The writing is almost like poetry. Some sections are basically stream-of-consciousness, and others juxtapose different events in his life by jumping back and forth between scenes. Sometimes these two styles are combined for effect: as, for example, he’s making out with an old high school friend, he’s also describing how he visited the anatomy department of a med school to try to find out what happened to his father’s donated corpse. Unsettling, but effective.
The author is very self-aware (or self-conscious), and much of the book is describing what he’s thinking, or what he thinks about what he’s thinking. It gets a bit ‘meta’ that way, but that’s kind of fun, since you get to be in the author’s head. Sometimes it’s meta to the point of being funny, like when his brother (in his early teens at the time) delivers a huge, sophisticated, philosophical monologue, mostly for narrative purposes, and Dave responds “Careful. You’re breaking character.”
For a book about an orphan taking care of another orphan, I didn’t find it sad. It actually had some funny parts. At the same time, I could feel how angry Dave was, how lost, how frustrated. I could picture him and his brother at the beach, showing off their frisbee skills, or Dave bringing a tiny teddy bear to his friend, who was in a coma. It was a vivid and well-written story.
And it has a prologue! What’s not to like?
Put the Book Down 