Before I get into my review, I want to give you, my readers, a bit of a back-story on this book because it's a pretty neat way that I came about reading it. It all started one night at a NYC bar. My sister and I were discussing the whole ESPN "Chink in the Armour" headline and the guy sitting next to us decided to give us his opinion on what happened. It turned out that he actually writes for ESPN. We got to talking and it came out that not only was he a writer like me (or better since he actually makes money from what he writes), but he graduated from Fordham like my sister. As the night progressed we had a great time talking together. My sister and him reminisced about their alma mater, him and I discussed writing and literature, and we all had a good amount of Jagerbombs and drinks. The next day I woke with quite the headache and an email from him with his soon-to-be-published novel attached. It took a few weeks to read because I hate reading long things on the computer, but I did it and now I'm going to share with you why you should purchase this once it comes out in stores!
Tim Struby, took on what I consider a very hard style by writing in the present tense. The story starts out with a hilarious scene about the main character's father having cut their hedges to resemble breasts and penises. From what I saw in that first chapter, I knew that there was going to be a lot of interesting happenings in the entire novel. I was not let down. The book follows Ned over the summer months. Tim described it to me as a coming-of-age tale, and in many ways it is, but in many ways it is something entirely different.
Ned is your normal, stereotypical, smart kid with a weird best friend- Douglas. Both boys have two dysfunctional parents and an older sister. Both boys don't seem to fit into their own homes. Ned escapes by bird watching, Douglas by hot-tubbing. Both boys also rely heavily on drugs and alcohol to get them through their lives. The two differ though in the fact that Ned seems to want to be socially accepted even if he doesn't pine over the idea, and Douglass can't wrap his highly intelligent mind around social etiquette and therefore can't even realize how far from being accepted he truly is. For me, the characters represented the turmoil of who Ned was on the inside in a physical way. Ned was Ned, the kid who gets caught by the cops and somehow gets the girl even if it's just for a moment. Douglas was Ned if he had been more outright with his intelligence and more troubled by his family life.
It may have been a typical summer for the boys had Mikey not shown up. Mikey was Ned's neighbor's grandson who was on house arrest. Over the summer he befriends the boys and they look up to him like a big brother. He gives them all confidence in themselves and never treats them as the social pariah that they were thought to be by their classmates. Through Mikey, Ned and Douglas even become friends with Nebbler, a boy who seemed strange even to them. This friendship leads the three boys to attend parties they may have skipped, to stand up to people they never would have stood up to, and to see others in ways that they would have never thought to before. Mikey, with all his problems, somehow teaches these boys to be better people, one could even argue that he was the catalyst to them coming into their manhood. The most amazing thing that Mikey does for Ned though is how he brings Ned's father back into reality.
One of the greatest strengths of the book is the immense wealth of knowledge that Struby shares with his readers. There must have been a lot of research that went into writing this book and it shows in a beautiful manner. Ned's fascination with birds made me both want to learn more about birds ad bird watching, and made me feel as though I would never look at a bird the same way. One of my least favorite things though was Douglas and his hot tub. The descriptions of how many times he fell asleep in his jacuzzi or the idea of him in the jacuzzi on a sweltering hot day made me want to vomit.
Overall, I think that once this is available, everyone should grab a copy. The book says a lot about life, about growing up, about love, about loss, and about friendship. There is a twist at the end that I didn't see coming and that makes me want to read the book all over again to see it from a different perspective. It is truly a work of art that can be appreciated by readers of all ages.
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