Customer Reviews

King Dork

5 star:		(53)
4 star:		(20)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(11)

 

 

The boy narrating this story has a perfect teenage voice-- funny, a little too smart and self-conscious about it, alternately defensive and searching. I was in love with it after the first page: I handed the book to someone else with instructions to read the first page. She loved it too. I had a hard time getting the book back.

The voice keeps its magic all the way through. I liked the device of using a class assignment of one of those "30 days to a better vocabulary" books to justify the narrator's use of words most teenagers wouldn't use.

The events in the book were nicely balanced between realism and farce. Some plot points were a little larger than life, but nothing too over the top.

Four stars instead of five? Near the end, the book veered off track on the murder-mystery subplot and lost steam. It recovered a little before the very end, but not fully. This was the last ten pages or so: suddenly I just wasn't interested in picking the book up and finishing it.

I feel this book is aimed at people my age (late 30s) more than at teenagers. There's something fishy when I know more than half the bands mentioned in the book. Boomer-resentment and Catcher In The Rye backlash are also Gen X phenomenon, I suspect. It didn't bother me, but I can understand why other reviewers called the book dated.

Beautiful writing, funny, and well worth the read.

This is a weird & delightful & incredibly funny novel. If you hated high school -- or just realized it was a rotten trial designed to crush your expectations for adulthood -- you may well love this book. If you thought high school was awesome, it's doubtful you're shopping for books on Amazon.

Portman's voice is remarkable and sly. The characters & dialogue are so good throughout the book that the end was kind of disappointing, if only because it ended too much like a normal book with some sort of crisis/climax like novels seem to always have these days. Or maybe I was just reluctant to finish the book at all. And I didn't care for a few clumsy claims that the narrative takes place in our current era and not the early 1980s; it would be a good idea for the publishers to remove those two or three "modern day" references from the paperback edition, which should be in many backpacks when schools starts in Fall. Trivial complaints ...

"King Dork" is funnier, more honest and better written than just about anything I've read in years. Frank Portman finds that Salinger guy, grinds his head in the gravel & makes the disillusioned clever kid once again safe for literature. Plus, the band names are fantastic, and there's a whole history of rock revealed in the pages.

If this author was Harvard bound, younger and more photogenic, perhaps he'd have a shot at the half million advance awarded to Kaavya "The Internalizer" Viswanathan whose plagiarism scandal recently rocked the literary world. He'd certainly deserve it, as there is no evidence that he himself didn't compose "King Dork" which is one of the best novels about the high school experience that I've read in a long time.

This book is a far more accurate, painful and hilarious look at the world of adolescence. If you identify with books in which which Nerd Girl gets a brand name makeover, sleeps with Campus Stud, winds up with Brooding Artist, makes a speech about values and gets into the Ivy League, then you probably won't enjoy "King Dork." If on the other hand, you are still mourning the cancellation of "Freaks and Geeks," then you probably will.

"King Dork" had me laughing and nodding my head in recognition from the first page to the last, whereas with the makeover type books I just snicker and wonder what universe the authors are living in to create a high school world that's 100 percent fantasy and fluff. What a shame that a book like "King Dork" that actually tells it like it isn't given half the (pre scandal) press of a book like "How Opal Mehta." For such a threadbare concept - young alienated man comes of age with the help of books, music and the opposite sex, it's still fresh and original.

When I finished reading King Dork, I felt sorry for Frank Portman. I felt sorry for him because it was an almost perfect book, and I wondered what happens to people who write books that great. Is it crushing if people don't like their work? Is the pressure to continue to write at that level a burden? Well, judging from people's reactions and the early reviews, Portman may not have to worry about the first concern. And it would be a real surprise if somebody with this much talent ever slipped.

I don't want to summarize the plot for anyone except to say that I repeatedly laughed out loud. And it was one of those books where you find yourself slowing down as you read, because you can't bear the idea that it is actually finite; that it will actually come to an end. I love Tom Henderson. I love Sam and Amanda, and Mom and LBT. I love the glossary and the band names, especially Underpants Machine. I strongly recommend this book if Steve Winwood makes you gag and Ricky Gervais is your hero. This book is for you if you wear berets, or capes, or hoodies, or clothes from old navy. This book is for you if you ever feel superior to everyone around you and remain terrified of them at all times. It's tender, it's rad, it's the best book I've read since 'Yes I Can.'

I have a 13-y.o. daughter and we share a lot of books, so I am well up on YA novels. This is easily the best one since The Diaries of Adrian Mole. Mr. Portman is a page-whizzing storyteller and a fine prose stylist with the most fantastic dry wit. I read this highly enjoyable and satisfying book in one sitting.

I can't wait to see what happens to Tom Henderson next, so I hope there is a sequel coming soon!!

Also this would make a great movie, I hope they don't wreck it like they always do, and I hope you make a zillion dollars no matter what. King Dork = a fine, fine book. Congratulations and continued success to you, Mr. Portman!

(Rock and roll!)

This book is a refreshing entry in a too-often stale literary season. The writing is more or less flawless, mingling literary twists of phrase with unpretentious "this is really how people sound" everyday prose. The depictions of high school sub-cultures and cliques are stingingly accurate and remind me quite a bit of the hilariously funny, blackly humorous TV series Freaks And Geeks, that ran for about one season five or six years ago.

This is the story of one young man "too young for his grade, too small for his age" and his painful trip thru the hellmouth that we call high school. He has lost his father to a suspicious accident, he has a mother who is shallow but well-meaning, and he is far too much of a thinker for his own good and happiness. Along the path of Mr. Portman's story, we read thru pseudo stream-of-consciousness rhapsodies, meet some marvelously well-conceived characters, and grimace as we are reminded of how evil adolescents can be. This is a book that skewers those ghastly "high school was the loveliest time in life" novels that are annoyingly pukeworthy. This is a mixture of telling it like it is and creating a fast-paced funny tale of how one boy deals with being who he happens to be, all cast into a setting we know he'll never one day confuse with his personal wonder years.

One of the better novels to come of the presses in a while. I enjoyed King Dork and think anyone who appreciates deft writing and good characterizations will as well.

This is a masterpiece for first time novelist, Frank Portman. His intellegent writing style and intertwining plots make King Dork hard to put down. I was also sad when I finnished the novel because I became so attached to its characters. Not sure if I would want my 14 year old son to read it because of some sexual content, but I might just be naive. Can't wait for Frank Portman's next work!

The protagonist of this disaffected youth/coming of age/mystery novel is deeply cynical about his world. And I mean deeply. Teachers, parents, brothers, classmates, the news, the world, girls, guys, sex, sex, and sex. They are all in for very tough treatment. Warning to baby boom parents: you and all you hold dear will be cut to the quick and the satirized view of your children's world will terrify you. Nonetheless, this boomer and his 15-year old son very much enjoyed this book. The extremes of cynicism cross over into parody and become easier to take, and the book is both funny and clever. And, at bottom, our hero has hope and faith as he perseveres. The mystery is not great, but the pleasure of the book is all in the telling and the observations. Writing songs for his rock band of no instruments but one thousand names, our protagonist pens the classic "I Saw Mr. Teone Checking Out Kyrsten Blakeney's Ass!," with surprising consequences. That's the kind of book we're talking about here: inappropriate, original, and funny. I would not want my preteen or youngest teens reading it, for fear that lack of experience might lead them to confuse satire with reality. But our hero would ridicule me for this view, and he would probably be right.

Basically...it's about being in high school, which sucks anyways. The main character of the book (he has many nicknames, we're gonna' call him King Dork) is a misfit geeky punk kid who pals around with another geeky punk kid. They are desperately trying to start a band and are constantly coming up with names and albums for the band (a great running gag), but also they are just trying to survive in high school. Sound generic and some parts are, but where this book wins it is with it's characterization.

Throughout the book we are constantly in King Dork's mind, as he rants about the hypocrisy in adults and high school. He tears Catcher in the Rye to shreds and makes you wonder why you even bothered to spend hours engrossed in the mind of generic Holden Caulfield when you could be getting the real deal from someone who's experienced it. Man is it good. At one point he is talking about the actual poem that is the basis for the title "Catcher in the Rye" and I wish I could describe it to you, but you should check it out yourself.

The best part about the book is he refers to the band The Doors as the worst thing to ever happen to mankind. I love it.

Read this book. It's dirty and gritty and real and great.

LOL! Which is about all I did while reading Frank Portman's KING DORK. Besides wanting to initiate Reader's Theatre and read passages aloud to my friends, family, or basically anyone within earshot. This clever parody of J.D. Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE is packed with enough sarcastic humor to make Mad Magazine look like Highlights for Children.

Holden Caulfield, step aside for the new king in town: Tom Henderson, great American nobody, Chi-mo, Sheepie, and King Dork. His Hillmont High School life is a combination of unsuccesses--from his exploits with girls, to his wannabe band that doesn't even have a drummer and amps...or guitars, to his father killed in a hit and run (or is that just what they told everyone?), to his ground-proximity position on the social totum pole.

But when his alphabetical-order friend, Sam Hellerman, drags him to this party where he meets the mysterious fake-mod Fiona (who disappears and leaves him wanting), his life spirals into a humorously-obsessed scavenger hunt for the first girl he's ever made out with. The spiral gets bigger when he finds an old copy of C.I.T.R. in a load of his Dad's old books and discovers a secret code within the pages. The Catcher Code, or something.

Tom's desire to know more about his Dad, and making out with Fiona for that matter, leads him into experiences he never thought he'd have. Dead bodies, devil heads, shrinks, bloody noses, monks, a little red book, laundry receipts, the Bible, police investigations, an accidental fight, and tranquilizers. Cause without that kind of stuff, life stays sort of typical, you know?

For a book that's as random as it is strategic, fresh as it is a copy, ordinary as it is hilarious, and smallscale as it is worldchanging, it won't be dethroning CATCHER IN THE RYE anytime soon. It's just a half step away from that special something a novel can do to my insides. I don't even know I can put my finger on it, besides to say that I didn't have to think. But I laughed out loud till I started to wonder if people thought I was faking it. And Tom's forever enshrined in my brain right there next to Holden. Maybe therein lies its genius.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens