I engaged in a lengthy self-debate before writ­ing this review: it took a while to decide whether I liked the book or not. Each side of my inter­nal debate team mar­shaled good argu­ments in its favor, and each side con­vinced me of the mer­it of its case. At which point I real­ized that you only both­er to argue with your­self over an inter­est­ing book. It seems, then, that this will be a thumbs-up review. But it is a com­plex, dark and dis­turb­ing book, nonethe­less, and it man­ages to be very fun­ny and very sad at the same time. 

After the death of his 15-year-old son, a father reads his son’s jour­nal in an attempt to get to know the boy. But why, oh why would any father wait 15 years and until it is too late to become inti­mate­ly acquaint­ed with such an unusu­al and fas­ci­nat­ing young man? The book’s entire premise is a heart­break. Hen­ry Every’s jour­nal opens the door to a unique per­son­al­i­ty. He’s an engag­ing, quirky, per­cep­tive and very fun­ny kid who con­stant­ly ana­lyzes the world he encoun­ters from his own high­ly orig­i­nal point of view. He is sur­round­ed by a drama­tis per­son­ae bizarre enough to have jumped from the pen of John Irv­ing. A stranger group of char­ac­ters is hard to find. His mother’s main inter­est is ants, his father’s main inter­est is jel­ly­fish, there’s a set of class­mates-from-hell, a most unusu­al grand­moth­er and a girl­friend with a miss­ing hand. It’s an imag­i­na­tive and mot­ley crew, indeed! And yet, the author, for the most part, avoids car­i­ca­ture. These char­ac­ters are extreme but some­how believ­able and well drawn. Each is wor­thy of a nov­el of his or her own. And each has an impact on Hen­ry that con­tributes plau­si­bly to his devel­op­ment and to his ulti­mate fate. 

This is a nov­el about the Every boy who will nev­er have a chance to grow into an Every man. Although dis­turb­ing, it’s fresh, dif­fer­ent and well worth the read.