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| Back cover illus. by Bosma |
New York : Simon & Schuster BFYR, 2013
438 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Winger is a readable, entertaining book. Smith is great with dialogue and humor and the plotting moves along well. It's a coming of age novel told in the voice of Ryan Dean West, aka "Winger" who is starting his junior year at a boarding school for wealthy kids in the Pacific NW. He's smart, scrappy, a hard-playing, talented rugby player with heart, apparently cute, but...he's only 14 - two years younger than his peers (and especially Annie, his friend who he desperately loves and hopes will feel the same). Winger is also immature, crude, completely obsessed with sex and rating the attractiveness of girls and women, and prone to fighting. The Booklist reviewer nailed it: "In short, Ryan Dean is a slightly pervy but likable teen."
I would have said "somewhat likable" - I found at least one his pranks creepy and repulsive, his constant ranking of females tiresome, and his jealous possessiveness both hypocritical and annoying. These would not have bothered me so much - except that Smith has written essentially a male fantasy tale. Winger, in spite of his immaturity, and insistence on what a loser he is, ends up with the two most attractive and interesting girls in the school in love with him. As the School Library Journal reviewer noted about one of the girls: "One wonders what she sees in Ryan Dean."
The novel ends with a shocking act of violence that doesn't seem believable (at least not in the context of the novel) and raises a lot of questionable issues about the supposed motives and behaviors of closeted gay guys.
In spite of my criticisms, the novel is funny, fun to read, and likely to appeal to both boys and girls.
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