Customer Reviews

The Every Boy

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

THE EVERY BOY by Dana Adam Shapiro is a slender and risky book. Its small size and decidedly short length --- just over 200 pages --- are misleading, perhaps purposefully so. One wouldn't think at first glance that the story of one boy's brief life, told after he has died, and the lives that he orbited during his short 15 years on the planet, would prove so full and ample. Yet the life of Henry Every was positively zaftig.

While Henry's propensity for quirky affectations and color-coded diary entries may incite readers to compare him to a certain Salinger protagonist, Henry is decidedly more optimistic. And while he often dons the cap of world-weariness, much of his delicately rendered observations are peppered with a kind of zany enthusiasm and almost child-like joy. Readers will have to decide for themselves which image of teenage boyhood rings truer, and while they may end up choosing Salinger's, Shapiro's is utterly disarming. Fifteen-year-olds with the sensitivity and awareness of Henry may be hard to come by, but we can still hold out hope that they exist.

Similarly, all the characters that flit through the pages of this novel are hopeful creations, so vivid and bizarre and wonderful that we can't help but hope they will leap off the page and into our worlds. Henry has a hard-drinking, gumbo-loving grandmother named Lulu who lives in a kind of perfect, symbiotic dysfunction with and her brash and fiery Cuban maid Papi; his Scandinavian mother cultivates ant-farms and mangles American platitudes, rendering them somehow truer; and the love of his short life, Benna, has only one hand.

These various personas are more than just amalgamations of quirks and oddities. Instead of splaying them on the page, reveling in their bizarre glory and his own cleverness in conceiving them, Shapiro treats each of his creations with a kind of sincere delicacy. Henry and his surreal world is not just a platform for Shapiro to demonstrate his wit and inventiveness; there is no hint of condescension or self-indulgence in his prose.

It is because we fall for Henry --- because we believe, perhaps despite ourselves, in his world --- that our knowledge of his inevitable demise does not sink the novel. And, as the events leading to Henry's death unfold, we simultaneously dip into the parallel story of his parents' tentative steps towards reconciliation, Lulu and Papi's manic love/hate dance, and Henry's own somewhat misguided, gentle and unfailingly hopeful stabs at being in love.

In this little book Shapiro asks readers to enter Henry's world with the wide-eyed hunger for the extraordinary that he as a writer and Henry as a character both display --- to soak up life's beautiful peculiarities. It may take a leap of faith on our part to allow ourselves to fall for this novel's charms, but in the end it is a vital risk to take. Indeed, Shapiro himself has demonstrated the importance, the value and the weight of small risks.

--- Reviewed by Jennifer Krieger

I was not sure what to expect from this book, but after reading it, I am hoping a second Novel is not too far behind. The story is told in a unique and refreshing style; I could not wait to get home from work to read it and it pained me to put it down to go to sleep. I highly recommend this book.

I hope I won't be accused of heresy if I say that Henry Every is more intriquing and more insightful than Holden Caulfield. Having enjoyed Henry so much, I wish he were alive for a sequel. Since that is not the case, perhaps the author will treat his readers to a next book featuring the inimitable Jorden. She is a standout among a cast of well drawn and fascinating characters.

if you've never heard of the Jersey Devil or an irukandji or an apotemnophile, if you hated high school, believe in love, like whipits and David Lynch, and if you just want to read a book that makes you bust out a hi-liter, then here ya go.

THE EVERY BOY is the story 15 year old Henry who, we discover right in the beginning, has recently died. The story unfolds as Henry's father reads the boy's diary and discovers he never really knew his son at all.

I realize I'm swimming against the tide here, but I must admit I found this book seriously lacking. While it's well written and filled with interesting, quirky characters, THE EVERY BOY falls short in several ways. First of all, the book is clearly intending to make a profound statement about human relationships. But it suceeds here only with regard to the father (who, reading his son's astute observations, finally realizes how profoundly he's let down everyone he loves). While the oddball characters are all portrayed in an artsy, engaging way, they are so far removed from real people, people you'll ever actually encounter in the real world, that whatever meaning Shapiro is looking to make vis-a-vis his characters are lost. For example, Henry is so erudite - even as a young child - he's not even remotely believable. Time and again the boy's unnatural precocity pulled me right out of the story. Most importantly, I never came to care about any of the characters. Perhaps their other-worldly natures made them too remote to care about.

i picked this book up the other day, a different size than all the others on the shelf. and lo and behold, mr. dana adam shapiro is a producer/co-director of murderball, the documentary about wheelchair rugby players that was a huge hit at disability awareness events i've organized. is mr. shapiro as sharp a writer as murderball is a film? yes, yes, yes! i've been thrilled by every page. what some reviewers describe as "quirky", others might recognize in the oddball aspect of his characters the tendency of highly intelligent people to be plagued by the disconnect between their internal lives and the symbols of self that they present to the rest of the world. if that makes any sense. so, all y'all should read the book, and D.A.S., you should call me so we can hang out and make art together, ok?

i really like this book. a friend suggested it to me and at first i thougt it was going to be sad... but he said it was funny and i trusted him. it is so funny and cute. i ended up buying it for all my friends, men, women, teens, and older people. it is a great gift and a great read. i'm looking forward to another book by the author.

amber, new york city

Had the joy of having Shapiro speak to my film class tonight and figured I would, in return, write the guy at least a quasi-review. What can I say about the book that hasn't already been said? Good book? Yes. Should you read it? Probably.

One thing I would like to address: I have heard many call Shapiro's work empty or hackneyed, citing that he attempts to substitute idiosyncratic characters in lieu of deeper meaning. Granted, the characters are quirky at the least and, for some, simply too eccentric to be recognized as "true" characters. Though we may have seen the "precocious teen/eccentric family" archetype reaching its pinnacle in both literature and film in the last decade or so, the oddities of the characters in Shapiro's work are far from relevant when considering the work using a holistic approach. I agree that such characters might veil deeper meanings, but this is the brilliance behind the work; it is simply up to the audience to lift the veil and search for the universal truths about love, loss, and "jellyfish" the Every Boy communicates while still employing that dark humor we all have come to love.

"The Every Boy" recalls the trials and tribulations of a boy's adolescence, the ups and downs of relationships with family and friends, and a battle for attention. I was slowly sucked into a world just like my own, where everything isn't always perfect. Anger, sadness, and complete happiness are emotions felt as Henry Every's experiences remind us that we are not alone. Through past and present, I saw the mistakes that the characters made and the way they go about trying to fix them. Overall the book was amazing, humorous, and has a plot that will keep your eyes glued to the pages.

Is it a compliment to say that I didn't want to talk to anyone for at least a day after finishing this book? Well, I didn't. It's that kind of a book. The kind where at first you don't want anyone to read it because it's just yours, but then you want everyone to read it. Here are some reviews that sum it up just right.

"Salinger, schmalinger! Burgeoning comparisons notwithstanding, you could black out every other paragraph in The Every Boy and it would still outcharm Catcher in the Rye. Outperform it, too. Icon magazine co-founder and former Spin senior editor Dana Adam Shapiro's debut novel does triple duty as mystery, exploration of love, and aborted coming-of-age story."

-- TIME OUT: NEW YORK

"I did not choose to review this book so much because of the plot - entertaining as it may be - but because of what I feel will be the lasting power of this book. Teenage angst has never been more intense. I believe The Every Boy could be taught in classrooms some day."

-- THE DAILY MISSISSIPPIAN

"This is a brilliant novel by an extraordinarily talented writer. Anyone who reads it with care will see immediately that it isn't Salinger or Roth or anyone else. It is Shapiro, a wonderful, new, surprising talent, whose writing is already elegantly refined."

-- MICHAEL PAYNE, author of Reading Theory: An Introduction to Lacan, Derrida and Kristeva