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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO NOAH YORK: "Anybody who tells you he doesn't have mixed feelings about his mother is either stupid or a liar." "Real life seldom makes me cry. The only thing that gets to me is the occasional Kodak commercial." "Sometimes I feel like Michelangelo, chiseling away at all the crap until nothing is left but the exquisite thing in the middle that no one else sees until it's uncovered for them." "Anyway. . ." Meet seventeen-year-old Noah York, the hilariously profane, searingly honest, completely engaging narrator of Bart Yates's astonishing debut novel. With a mouth like a truck driver and eyes that see through the lies of the world, Noah is heading into a life that's only getting more complicated by the day. His dead father is fading into a snapshot memory. His mother, the famous psycho-poet, has relocated them from Chicago to a rural New England town that looks like an advertisement for small-town America--a bad advertisement. He can't seem to start a sentence without using the "f" word. And now, the very house he lives in is coming apart at the seams--literally--torn down bit by bit as he and his mother renovate the old Victorian. But deep within the walls lie secrets from a previous life--mason jars stuffed with bits of clothing, scraps of writing, old photographs--disturbing clues to the mysterious existence of a woman who disappeared decades before. While his mother grows more obsessed and unsettled by the discovery of these homemade reliquaries, Noah fights his own troubling obsession with the boy next door, the enigmatic J.D. It is J.D. who begins to quietly anchor Noah to his new life. J.D., who is hiding terrible, haunting pain behind an easy smile and a carefree attitude. Part Portnoy, part Holden Caufield, never less than truthful, and always fully human, Noah York is a touching and unforgettable character. His story is one of hope and heartbreak, love and redemption, of holding on to old wounds when new skin is what's needed, and of the power of growing up whole once every secret has been set free.… (more)
User reviews
So. A little funny, a little mystery, an interesting mother/son relationship, a little romance, a little sex, maybe even a little 'literary,' but looked to have conversational, easily digestible prose. And the praise for it seems pretty universal. To a certain extend I was willing to write that off as the only-people-who-like-this-sort-of-thing-read-it-so-everyone-who-reads-it-likes-it factor, but I was expecting to like this pretty well.
Verdict? I feel kind of horrible saying this since I've barely found a negative review, but... This isn't bad at all, but I really do think it's overrated.
The first half, though, IS better than the second. The worst part, I'd say, is that the romance between the mains feels pretty generic. J.D. and all those connected with him feel this way, actually. He's got a bitchy girlfriend, a couple normal supportive guy friends, a nicer female friend who will of course be supportive of their gayness later on, bullies at school, and a ugly bitchy mom and a fat drunk of a dad. I mean, what is this, Harry Potter? Do people have to have such flat, overdone personalities, and must they also have physical appearances that match them just so you don't get confused or anything? (Mind, it kind of works in HP. But here we're not reading HP, and here it doesn't work.) J.D. himself doesn't have much of a personality at all (or rather, he seemed like he might when we meet him, but he flattens out more and more the longer the novel goes on).
Still, the two are decently endearing, and for other good points, in general it's pretty well written, a little funny (it's not really THAT funny, mind. It's just got kind of a humorous tone sometimes), the mystery is nothing amazing but pretty interesting as a side plot. Noah's mom was a good mix of intelligent, motherly, and batty, and there's tension in the air when she starts to become more unhinged. Actually, this novel at first kind of reminded me of the movie Beautiful Thing, in that the romance was sweet but generic, but the movie was made actually very good by the fact the other characters were more interesting, and sort of warmed me up so I could enjoy the scenes between the mains more. The mystery in the house and Noah's mom were what did that for me in this book. It was pleasant.
In about the middle, though, it begins to lose direction on all accounts. As we learn more about the mystery of the jars and the house, it starts looking less interesting and more just contrived. Noah's mom becomes more distant generic crazy. As everyone around him spirals into crazy or depressed, Noah really doesn't change his behavior much. There's an attempt to give a couple of the characters angsty backgrounds to explain their current personality. Since the characters have already gotten together at this point, nothing more is going on on the romantic end.
So it's a pleasant read for the first part, and a little tiresome for the last. For me. But even at the best of times, I really do finds this much less grand than most seem to say. It's still maybe a little better than average, but I probably wouldn't read anything else by Yates since I'm finding this rather overrated. ...Only I've already got another novel of his on my shelf. Well, this was a first novel, anyway. Perhaps he improves?