Book review: The Alex Crow by Andrew SMith
39) The Alex Crow by Andrew Smith
Three major story lines intertwine in Andrew Smith's latest novel. The author of Winger and Grasshopper Jungle offers a science-fiction(ish) take on biotechnology and the pressures of being a teenager. The main thread is the story of Ariel, a refugee of a never-named country. Ariel survived the slaughter of his village by hiding inside a refrigerator. He is adopted by a family from Virginia, and soon after is shipped off with his new adoptive brother Max to a summer camp for boys who are addicted to electronic devices-- even though neither actually is. Ariel's new father works for a biotech company in the super-secret Alex division, and as a perk gets to send his kids to the camp for free. Smith doesn't hold back on the boys-at-summer-camp raunch in this storyline; there are enough euphamisms for masturbation to create a slang dictionary. But, as readers of Smith's other novels have come to expect, the raunch is both funny and purposeful as it serves as the stage for satirizing how society expects teens to conform (the camp) without any guidance from the grown-ups in that society (the Lord of the Flies style bunkhouse and the raunchy jokes). A second storyline features journal entries from the ice-bound ship The Alex Crow, the third storyline details the insane melting man, who serves to tie the storylines together.
While not as powerful or poignant as Winger, The Alex Crow offers a deeper and more subtle statement about being a teenager in 2015. Smith's style is reminiscent of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: strange storylines you don't quite get as you read, with a conversational prose packing a punch you don't see coming.
Due to the multitude of summer camp jokes, I'd recommend this for high school and up.
Three major story lines intertwine in Andrew Smith's latest novel. The author of Winger and Grasshopper Jungle offers a science-fiction(ish) take on biotechnology and the pressures of being a teenager. The main thread is the story of Ariel, a refugee of a never-named country. Ariel survived the slaughter of his village by hiding inside a refrigerator. He is adopted by a family from Virginia, and soon after is shipped off with his new adoptive brother Max to a summer camp for boys who are addicted to electronic devices-- even though neither actually is. Ariel's new father works for a biotech company in the super-secret Alex division, and as a perk gets to send his kids to the camp for free. Smith doesn't hold back on the boys-at-summer-camp raunch in this storyline; there are enough euphamisms for masturbation to create a slang dictionary. But, as readers of Smith's other novels have come to expect, the raunch is both funny and purposeful as it serves as the stage for satirizing how society expects teens to conform (the camp) without any guidance from the grown-ups in that society (the Lord of the Flies style bunkhouse and the raunchy jokes). A second storyline features journal entries from the ice-bound ship The Alex Crow, the third storyline details the insane melting man, who serves to tie the storylines together.
While not as powerful or poignant as Winger, The Alex Crow offers a deeper and more subtle statement about being a teenager in 2015. Smith's style is reminiscent of Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five: strange storylines you don't quite get as you read, with a conversational prose packing a punch you don't see coming.
Due to the multitude of summer camp jokes, I'd recommend this for high school and up.
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