From Publishers Weekly
Boarding school antics and teenage epiphanies fuel this slim but entertaining runaway German bestseller (more than 200,00 copies sold), an autobiographical debut by Lebert, who's 16. Benjamin, the novel's protagonist, is also 16, a misfit who must struggle against a near-paralysis of his left side and a chronic lack of academic aptitude to merely get through life. Having flunked out of four schools before the novel's beginning, he comes to Neuseelen, his fifth, where he must graduate from ninth grade or else. He quickly befriends a set of similarly maladjusted teens; together, they search the school grounds for excitement. When such limited pleasures as after-hours booze and raunchy teen sex wear thin, they head for Munich, where they are guided by a wise old man (who claims to sing "the song of life") to a strip club for a night of drink and debauchery. As the book moves toward its end, Benjamin flunks out yet again and is sent home, without any sign that school or life have taught him anything. Lebert's knowing yet ingenuous voice and the flatness of his exposition give character to his tale, but the action revolves around the cliches of adolescent life. Although the characters are likable and also quite believable, they don't grow substantially from their coming of age. Ultimately most interesting as a publishing phenomenon--Lebert's insights into human psychology, society and development are understandably limited--the novel moves along at a good clip, and what it lacks in depth it does make up for in animation and verve. Rights sold in Denmark, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, Italy, the U.K., France, Spain, Norway, Finland, Slovenia, Estonia, Croatia, Brazil, Greece, Taiwan, Portugal, Poland, Sweden; Turkey, Israel, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovak Republic. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From School Library Journal
YA-The young protagonist is shuffled between boarding schools supposedly for poor grades in math and German (his native language), but more likely because of his inability to mesh with the image the administrators have about the students who attend their schools. Benni is partially paralyzed on his right side, a condition that seems to have more of an effect on the adults around him than on his peers, and he forms a natural clique with a group of fellow outcasts. Benni, Fat Felix, Skinny Felix, Janosch the ringleader, Troy the bed wetter, and Florian aka Girl go in search of an existential experience, which includes sex but also encompasses finding the meaning of life with a capital L. The boys develop a philosophy of the soul that includes keeping yourself spiritually alive into adulthood and doing the crazy things that enable life to speak through you, in all its hard, crappy glory. The obvious comparison to Holden Caulfield is misplaced here; the adults who surround these students are not phonies or actively evil, but presented as minor obstacles to the experience of real life, when they appear in the boys' consciousness at all. The novel is nearly over before an adult assists the runaways by buying them tickets to Munich and introducing them to adult entertainment. Comparisons of the teen novelist to S. E. Hinton are somewhat obvious, but what is more important than outcast status and the bonding of family in this novel is the ability to create a family among people far from home, with only one another to draw on.
Sheryl Fowler, Chantilly Regional Library, VA Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
