Tough and Tender

The Closest I've Come by Fred Aceves

New York, NY : HarperTeen, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2017]

310 p. ; 22 cm. 

I'm a sucker for a book with heart, and this novel had me pretty early on.  It's about a Latinx young man growing up poor in Tampa, Florida and struggling to find love, a way out of his impoverished neighborhood, and a way out of the restrictions of having to keep up a tough macho front.  He also is trying to survive a negligent alcoholic mother and her racist and abusive boyfriend who lives with and sponges off of them.

What are the things I especially liked about this book? I love that though Marcos, the main character, is smart and at times humorous, he is not constantly throwing out witty, hip comments and comebacks. In some YA books the protagonist feels like an attempt by the author to come up with a contemporary Holden Caulfield that doesn't ring true. In this novel, Marcos is so believable. He is also believable in his struggle to become a more authentic human being - we get glimpses of his true feelings through his inner thoughts and those feelings get expressed imperfectly (as they do with most people growing up).  I also love the romance (or desired romance) that forms a core of the novel.  It doesn't follow the conventional route in resolving itself and that is refreshing. I appreciated the portrayal of teachers in the book; they are not stereotyped as saviors or villains, but as people who have a tough job and can be really kind. The book also deals with race and cliques in ways that don't feel incredibly heavy handed or unrealistic.

I also love a book that bluntly reveals the struggles of being poor as just the matter of fact situation someone finds themselves in. Marcos just gets by with having to wear crummy shoes and just enough clean t-shirts to look good at school. One of his buddies - the academically most successful of the bunch - starts dealing drugs for an aunt in order to make more money - a decision that is treated realistically. Finally, I should mention that the book helpfully portrays the complicated situation a young person can find themselves  in when an adult in their household is physically and emotionally abusive.

Would I recommend The Closest I've Come? I definitely would. I think it would satisfy a lot of different kinds of readers.

Cruel School

The Nickel Boys by Colson Whitehead

New York : Doubleday, [2019]  

213 p. ; 22 cm.

 

After reading Whitehead's The Underground Railroad, I knew I wanted to read his latest novel - The Nickel Boys.  Underground Railroad was brutal at times, but the fantastic nature of the novel helped me as a reader keep it's terror at bay - there is no such consolation in Nickel Boys, especially when you realize that the novel is firmly grounded in the real-life horrors that occurred in the Dozier School for Boys in the Florida panhandle. 

Whitehead's novel is set in the mid-60s and involves a stand-up African American high school student - Elwood- who is headed for college near Tallahassee.  But being a young black man in Jim Crow Florida lands Elwood in a reform school for boys that is run with sadistic cruelty, racism and corruption.  There, the idealistic Elwood faces the barbarism of the school and becomes friends with the more savvy Turner who is willing to help them both survive (boys in the school are sometimes killed by the staff both in real-life and in the novel). The novel is a taught and terrifying story of survival in the cruelest of environments. The reader never knows what will happen to the characters right up until the shocking ending. 

As I mentioned in my post about The Underground Railroad, Whitehead is a superb writer and - if you can endure the cruelty of the events - the novel is well worth reading.