From Publishers Weekly
With this unsettling, coolly polished novel, Lynch (Gypsy Davey; the Blue-Eyed Sons series) demonstrates once again his profound understanding of society's casualties, misfits and losers. Whitechurch, where 16-year-old narrator Oakley resides alone (except when his alcoholic father shows up), is a dilapidated old New England town with no industry save for a newly built state prison; the prison serves also as a metaphor for the characters' inability to escape their problems. Passive and ambitionless, Oakley allows himself to drift in the wake of his sociopathic best friend, Pauly, who has a girlfriend in "good girl" Lilly. Oakley is tacitly understood to be in love with her, too, and the three form a triangle that nothing, Pauly insists, will change. But Lilly plans to leave for college in Boston and, in the denouement, Pauly, thinking in his delusional state to maintain the status quo, commits a horrifying crime that finally forces Oakley to act for himself. Lynch's writing is spare, both when setting forth the action and when incorporating free verse by Oakley and Pauly. While the publisher describes this work as short stories, the progression of events and the deterioration of the triangle depend on a sequential reading, and the mood darkens incrementally. The bleak, detached handling of disturbing, often violent material reserves this work for mature readers. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up-This series of interconnected short stories leaves readers with more questions than answers. Oakley, the narrator who lives in a seedy apartment with an alcoholic father on disability, and compulsive, violent Pauly have been friends since childhood. Lilly, a recent transplant to Whitechurch, unites and divides the boys, since both love her. Pauly is her boyfriend and Oakley, her best friend and confidant. Tensions caused by the love triangle simmer throughout the stories. Lilly plans to leave town and attend college, while Pauly, angry and possessive, hatches futile plots to keep her home. Then, in a life-defining moment, his jealousy erupts when Lilly doesn't come home all night (she and Oakley have been together in the church), and he bludgeons to death a young man with whom he thinks she's been. The first-person narration is interspersed with poems-soulful and playful, recited by both boys-a technique used to advance and expand the story, but one causing more confusion than illumination. Though certain scenes and characters are memorable, even humorous, most vignettes are either disturbing or pathetic. In one, Pauly insists that Oakley insert a Colt .45 into his mouth. In another, Oakley stands by as his father has a fistfight outside a local tavern over innuendos about his son's possible homosexuality. Unlike Lynch's previous fine work, whether dark in mood like Iceman (1994) or comic like Slot Machine (1995, both HarperCollins), this novel told in stories never coalesces. Readers are left bereft of characters with whom they can empathize and will be glad to leave Whitechurch.
Alice Casey Smith, Sayreville War Memorial High School, NJ Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
