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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Reviews from Brizmus Blogs Books, March 4, 2010
This review is from: The House of Tomorrow (Hardcover)
Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances, said "I adore this book." That's my "just finished this book" reaction as well. I absolutely ADORED it.
It's so gritty and heartfelt and REAL that I couldn't help but feel attached from sentence one. Sebastian, a 16 year old who grew up in a geodesic dome with a grandmother obsessed with Buckminster Fuller, and Jared, a 16 year old whose family is screwed up and who just recently underwent a heart transplant, are not your average teen boys. But they could have been. Their flaws are so understandable, their anger and frustration so real, that despite their odd circumstances, they are, in the end, just two completely identifiable teen boys, and the bond that they form is believable and touching in a way rarely seen in books nowadays.
Bognanni's way of dealing with Jared's problems through the music he listens to and creates was masterful. Music allows Sebastian and Jared to discover themselves and reveal themselves to each other in a way that most teenage boys would be unable to do. They are the music, and the music is them, and if you've ever had any kind of relationship with music, you need to read this book. There is no better song to explain how Jared and Sebastian felt than "Teenagers from Mars" by the Misfits, and the way he wove this in and allowed it, along with other punk rock music, to create a bond between Jared and Sebastian, was absolutely genius.
Something else genius: the way he used punk rock to set a mood for the book without letting the mood of the book be the punk rock. Let me try to explain that better. I knew, going into the book, that I would be reading about some of my favorite punk. So I made a playlist in iTunes with things like the Misfits, Minor Threat, the Ramones, the Dead Kennedys, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, the Business, etc. . ., and I set it to go when I started the book. At first, it was okay. But as I read more and more, it wasn't angry, fast music that I wanted to be listening to. While the music perfectly described the fears of these two teenage boys and allowed them to express themselves without acting like retarded girls (I'm sure that's something Jared would say), it was all just a cover up for their deeper problems. The story of their frienship was so sweet and sad that, while gritty, angry music worked for them, it didn't work for me while reading.
Reading this book, I felt like I could tell that Peter Bognanni put his heart and soul into it. He raises interesting questions and gives you just enough of the answers. He breathes so much life into his two unique, quirky characters that I can't help but wonder if one of them is his son. One of them was my brother, even if he didn't mean for it to be, and my guess is at least one of the boys is someone in your life as well. His writing is lyrical and beautiful and, I say it again, heartfelt.
One more thing I'd like to say as an afterthought - referring to Napoleon as the first punk rocker: totally RAD! I absolutely love it!
I think it would be hard to read this book and not love it, or at least feel it. Despite the teen smoking and the affluence of naughty language, it comes HIGHLY recommended by Brizmus Blogs Books (for older teens and adults, of course). Read it, and you'll see what I mean.
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Bodes well for tomorrow!, March 8, 2010
This review is from: The House of Tomorrow (Hardcover)
Customer review from the Amazon Vine™ Program (What's this?)
This gently humorous novel, loosely and comically attached to the life and philosophy of futurist architect Buckminster Fuller, introduces an exciting new voice to the fiction scene. Some other reviewers here seem to suggest that it is a book for young adults, which is kind of like calling "Harold and Maude" a film for teenage boys, but I think it is much more than that.
The story brings together a passionate and visionary grandmother, a recently abandoned wife with a desperately ill son, a teenage girl starved for a touch, and the protagonist, the young man who longs to touch her. Most importantly, it describes the genesis of a friendship, comically but legitimately defined as one person who believes in another's "stupid ideas." Offering a generous definition of family, it spans generations and makes self-sacrifice seem like a form of joyful communion. Through the narrator, it also delicately inhabits the voice and mind of a kind of "enfant sauvage," that is someone artificially kept away from ordinary society. But rather than "sauvage," our narrator is hyper-civilized -- and quite charming!
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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Funny, endearing, instant nostalgia in a book., March 4, 2010
This review is from: The House of Tomorrow (Hardcover)
If you're looking for a change of scenery from your regular reading, something refreshingly innocent, humorous, charming, with a twinge of sadness, but overall hopeful and unique, than The House of Tomorrow is what you're looking for. Teenager Sebastian Prendergast lives in a glass dome on top of a hill overlooking a town in Iowa. Yes, I said it, Iowa. An unlikely place for a boy to find himself through punk-rock music, but the Minnesota girl in me loves it.
Parentless at a young age, Sebastian lives with his aging grandmother who homeschools him on the teachings of dead philosopher-architect Buckminster Fuller. Sebastian's grandmother has grand plans for him, somewhat new-age (though she hates the word) worldly plans. And her teachings and stories are all he's ever known. When his grandmother has a stoke while giving a tour of their dome, Jared is accompanied to the hospital by the Whitcomb family: single mother Janice, sarcastic son Jared, and icy damaged daughter Meredith. On that day, his whole world changes. When his grandmother kicks him out of the dome for having email conversations about punk-rock music with Jared, Sebastian goes to stay with the Whitcomb family. In the course of his weeks with them, he and the Whitcombs are changed and their worlds will never quite be the same.
Peter Bognanni's debut novel made me laugh more than once. The writing quality is good and appropriately simplistic, it's not trying to make you smarter, or make you feel stupid. It's trying to move you, and it will. The characters are crisp and realistic, images of them poured off the page as I read, and I can imagine this as a wonderful film. I sympathize with Sebastian, who is naive but not stupid, and I am thankful Bognanni made him intelligent enough with the outside world, instead of entirely unknowing of human interaction. I believe that Sebastian would use the sort of strange scientific language that he did, having been taught by his grandmother inside of a dome for the majority of his life; but I would have found it unrealistic if, say, he had no knowledge of how money works, or how to use a pay phone.
My favorite supporting character is Jared. Jared of the too-skinny jeans and punk-rock dreams. Of the stolen cigarettes and sarcastic one-liners. Jared is amusing and witty and wonderful. He and Sebastian form a unique bond and their interactions are the best parts of the story.
This book will change you; will make you look up the music of The Misfits; will make you recall your old, yet undying love for The Cure. It will make you nostalgic for your teenage years. It's simply a really good book; unique, with flawless dialogue, and touching characters that will stay with you when you're done reading.
4 stars
(I received this book from the publisher for review)
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