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Thumbsucker: A Novel
 
 
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Thumbsucker: A Novel (Paperback)

~ (Author) "It was the one thing I'd always done..." (more)
Key Phrases: Perry Lyman, Elder Jessup, Elder Knowles (more...)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
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Thumbsucker: A Novel + Lost in the Meritocracy: The Undereducation of an Overachiever + Up in the Air
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

New York magazine's witty, cheeky book critic Walter Kirn rides high in his exhilarating second novel, and so does his protagonist, Minnesota teen dweeb Justin Cobb. Justin's hippie dentist may have hypnotized him out of his socially perilous thumbsucking habit, but he can't suppress the boy's "oral gift." Justin's mouth just won't quit: beer, decongestants, nitrous oxide, cough syrup, Midol, and Ritalin go in, and out spritzes hilarious commentary on his eccentric yet authentic life and times. Our hero's mood larks and plunges erratically, but Kirn's prose is alert, artful, under control. The debate coach's skin is "the neutral hue of turkey meat." One of Justin's realistically inconclusive crushes is a redhead "with freckles the color of new pennies." Her dad is a Limbaughesque columnist who calls welfare recipients "food tramps." Meanwhile, Justin's dad, Mike, is "the Führer of fly-fishing," an ex-gridiron hero obsessed with deer hunting (and eating). He's also prone to spouting his vile old coach's preposterous apothegms ("Until you're broken, you don't know what you're made of"). Mike is funny and poignant--a tricky note to hit.

Like a mucked-up modern Huck Finn plying his own stream of consciousness, Justin drifts into weird scenes: a job at a gas station fated for torching, a visit by his mad Winnebago vagabond grandparents, a kidnapping caper to rescue a pothead infant from sinister hick parents, Grit and Munch. Chapter 4, about a Chippewa City debate meet and rather chaste orgy, is dazzling teen satire. Not that Thumbsucker is flawless: Justin's nurse mom is a vague character, his more vivid kid brother is inexplicably ignored, the satire of the Hazelden celeb rehab is lame, and, like Huck's, Justin's adventures sort of peter out instead of leading up to a slam-bang finale. The family's conversion to Mormonism seems arbitrary, though richly detailed, since Kirn was a small-town Mormon kid.

Flaws, schmaws. Thumbsucker is the truest book about adolescence I've read since This Boy's Life, and Kirn is some kind of comic genius. --Tim Appelo



From Publishers Weekly

Dark and witty, novelist (She Needed Me) and book critic Kirn's narrative of demoralized 1980s suburbia chronicles the coming-of-age of Justin Cobb, a 14-year-old who develops a series of addictions after his dentist-cum-therapist breaks his thumb-sucking habit. This premise is fortified by Kirn's uncommonly thoughtful treatment of Justin's humorously dysfunctional familyAhis sports-obsessed father calls his family "you people"; his beloved, increasingly New Age mother is a nurse at a celebrity rehab clinic; his younger brother, Joel, quietly cultivates a fetish for expensive designer clothing. Only Justin seems to realize how close his family is to emotional collapse. Unable to bear the weight of saving them himself, he cleverly engineers their conversion to Mormonism. Thankfully, their new-found spiritualism does nothing to stifle Justin's iconoclastic opportunism, which keeps the story bouncing along to its conclusion. Kirn's bildungsroman contains all the genre's essential themes (sexual exploration, intellectual flowering, etc.) but his plotting subverts any clich?d revelations. When Justin joins his high school speech team, his gift for persuasion, and a new addiction to decongestants, makes him cocky, but he is quickly deflated by his melancholy speech coach. Many other neat reversals of fortune, peppered with taut, edgy dialogue, fit beautifully into Kirn's satirical style. However carefully Justin documents the changes in other characters, his own character remains oddly consistent, so that, despite all the laughs, the novel ends with the hero still on the brink of real transformation. But he's such a sharp, endearing lad, with psychic depths as fascinating as his glossy cynicism that readers will be satisfied with young Justin just as he is. Author tour. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

  • Paperback: 300 pages
  • Publisher: Anchor; 1st edition (October 19, 1999)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0385497091
  • ISBN-13: 978-0385497091
  • Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.2 x 0.8 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.com Sales Rank: #455,698 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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More About the Author

Walter Kirn
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Front Cover | First Pages | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
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First Sentence:
It was the one thing I'd always done. Read the first page
Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
Perry Lyman, Elder Jessup, Elder Knowles, Elder Tinsdale, New York, Maple Glen, Book of Mormon, Woody Wolff, Joseph Smith, Sister Helms, Steve Hanson, Jesus Christ, Garden of Eden, Heavenly Father, Red Man, Bishop Salaman, Los Angeles, Black Velvet, Burger King, Don Johnson, Labor Day, Malibu Nights, Moby Dick, One Year, Salt Lake City
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Customer Reviews

32 Reviews
5 star:
 (14)
4 star:
 (8)
3 star:
 (7)
2 star:
 (3)
1 star:    (0)
 
 
 
 
 
Average Customer Review
4.0 out of 5 stars (32 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Read it in ONE SITTING!, August 22, 2005
So, I saw the tralier for Mike Mills' film adaptation of this book a few weeks ago and decided that since I live in North Louisiana and I probably won't get to see the film until it comes to DVD (unless I drive a few hundred miles to an independent theater), that I would buy the book. So, I ordered it and it came in the mail on a Saturday afternoon. Given that my life is pretty boring altogether, especially in the Summer, I unwrapped it, opened it up, and dived in. And, I kid you not, I did not stop reading until I was done. From the first paragraph, scratch that...the first LINE, I was hooked. Now, I will admit that I am a sucker for a good coming of age, Holden Caulfield-esque novel, but this one really surpassed my expectations. As an English major and hopeful writer (fingers crossed), I found this to be one of the most thoughtful, insightful, dramatic, and darkly humorous novel's I've ever read. I think Walter Kirn did a fantastic job of portraying his characters as authentic specimens and I am extremely jealous of his writing style altogether. All in all, I would recommend this book to anyone with and open mind and an afternoon to spare, because they won't be able to put it down.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars There Are Worse Habits, May 27, 2001
By Mary Esterhammer-Fic (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews
THUMBSUCKER started off great--I liked the narrator Justin from the first page. But then it sort of fizzled. I gave it two stars only because, like Saturday Night Live, it just didn't sustain the humor and energy that grabbed me in the beginning.

The funniest passage is his description of a nocturnal trip in his grandparents' motorhome.

There were a few other sections where I laughed out loud, but it always seemed that the reader was held at arm's length, so I couldn't feel Justin's adolesence anguish. I think this book would have been much better if it had been edited a little more tightly, or if the grandparents--and other peripheral characters--had more page-space.

Read this if you're going on a long bus trip. It's not a great book, but it's not a bad book, either.

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9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars One Thumb Up, September 1, 2002
By Virginia Lore "rumtussle" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
Oral fixations, family dysfunctions and other psychobuzzian concepts plump out the story of Justin's high school years in Walter Kirn's Thumbsucker. Thumb sucking, whiskey drinking, fly fishing, toke smoking and bible thumping play a big part in this story which is less about coming of age, and more about resisting coming of age. Walter Kirn's prose is clear and interesting and the Midwestern setting vivid. But his characterization of Justin is inconsistent. I found it very difficult to understand what motivated Justin as Kirn sped him through the years of his adolescence. On one page he was out to score pot and a scant hundred pages later he was striding up a mountain to save his father's life with scarcely any explanation for his behavior in between.

Although the incidents of this book were fun to read, they didn't work together well as a novel, so I can't quite give it two thumbs up.

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Most Recent Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars absorbing
Thumbsucker follows the up, down, and all around trajectory of Justin Cobb, a teenager living in the Upper Midwest in the 1980s. Read more
Published 22 months ago by Adam Rust

4.0 out of 5 stars good Young Adult reading
3.5 stars. The cynicism of the narrator's world never completely lifts, but the narrative moves briskly along from one warped vignette to another. Read more
Published on April 27, 2005 by John Clements

4.0 out of 5 stars If you like "The Sleeping Father"...
Who can resist a title like that? I ordered this book a few years ago based on the author's reputation. Read more
Published on March 11, 2005 by Mark Bonney

5.0 out of 5 stars Thumbersucker and then some
Justin Cobb tried EVERYTHING to stop sucking his thumb. Finally his dentist suggests hypnosis. After this hypnosis (performed by the dentist) Justin seems to forgo thumbsucking,... Read more
Published on June 17, 2003 by amy fields

3.0 out of 5 stars I couldn't put it down.
I didn't LOVE this book, but I still could not find myself to put it down. It was interesting, and at times, even good, but I just could not in anyway identify myself with any of... Read more
Published on April 15, 2003 by gingerbread_coffin

5.0 out of 5 stars Good!
Thumbsucker was surprisingly good. Justin Cobb was basically a screw-up and the book narrates how he deals with the challenges he faced. Read more
Published on September 2, 2002 by adrian_mole

3.0 out of 5 stars Thumbsucker
This story takes place in Minnesota, during the Reagan era in the 1980's. It is the story of 16 year old Justin Cobb and his journey to find his place in this world, and in his... Read more
Published on July 29, 2002 by melinda marsh

3.0 out of 5 stars Psych out
Being a former thumbsucker myself I found the humor related to this unfortunate vicitm of an oral fixation not only whitty but excentric. Read more
Published on August 10, 2001

5.0 out of 5 stars Thumbs Up
This was a great read. The characters are hilarious, with my favorites being Mike and Grandma. I'll be buying more of Walter Kirn.
Published on July 16, 2001 by G. Bardsley

4.0 out of 5 stars Simple, but funny
Such a fun read! I think I read the whole thing in one sitting. A coming-of-age novel set in the 80's with a boy dealing with his parents whom he is not allowed to call Mom or Dad... Read more
Published on November 14, 2000 by mapledaisy

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