Leah Hackman

This book was definitely a fun little romp. Just the right pacing and level of danger, with excitement balanced with the familiar of a kid's routine and family.

On a more critical level, I was impressed (though not surprised, given how well he did this in The curious incident of the dog in the night time) by how well Haddon managed to capture the voice of a kid—their hopes and fears and misunderstandings felt very real to me, and not at all like the affectations of an adult imitating youth.

I found I could see the author too much in the writing of this book. In spite of having chapters from several different characters perspectives, it never quite got to the point where I was hearing several different voices. Everyone's voice felt too similar, and that seems almost impressive when you consider this means a 9-year old boy who “was tested with inconclusive results for aspergers” at times has a voice similar to a 70-something year old woman. Unfortunately, the author's overwhelming voice also sometimes over-steps into being overly-saccharine.; the text seems to have too many with “deep-thoughts (tm)”, where introspection too-often moralizes.

That being said, I enjoyed this book more than I expected to. The two parallel stories were engaging and the imagery in parts was lovely. I was also comfortable with how the text incorporated September 11th in the story, which was a concern I had when starting the novel.

This book makes me think of an episode of this american life that I once listened to which was about fiascos. I recall the episode describing a small-town production of Peter Pan which quickly snowballed from funny, to ridiculous, to a full blown fiasco over the period of one act. The narrator described the change in the audience as the play quickly fell apart—transitioning from a group of sympathetic and encouraging patrons, to slight discomfort for the feelings of the actors, to full out hysteria as the humour of the situation could no longer be denied. This book is a story about one family's fiasco. And towards the end, when the ball is really rolling, it takes on a life of its own. Unfortunately, the build is too slow and puts the reader in the position of discomfort for far too long. I'm not at all surprised by the number of people who stopped me while I was reading this book just to tell me that they had started it but never got into it and put it down without finishing. While I did enjoy the dark comedy of this ultimate fiasco, I don't know if the payout ultimately balances out the initial investment.

Ultimately, this story reminded me a lot of True Grit in that it is a very personal adventure story. There isn't a lot of glamour to it; it isn't a story about becoming a hero, or accomplishing the unimaginable, or changing the world they live in. It's really just a meandering journey of two brothers. But I really like the feel of the ending: where usually adventure stories end with the hero achieving some climactic task, leaving the reader to wonder how this character will live now that they've ascended above normalcy, in this story, the “final task” feels almost like a side note, and it is truly the return to normalcy which is the true goal and test for the hero. The reader is left with the satisfaction of knowing exactly how the character will live now that his adventure is over.