Grasshopper Jungle

When I write a book review on this blog, I also cut and paste it onto the Goodreads web site.  For books that I find interesting, but not so interesting as to write a blog review, I often write a short blurb directly to Goodreads, but ignore it here on my blog.

Today, I began writing such a short blurb for Grasshopper Jungle, by Andrew Smith -- a book I read because of a very favorable review in Sunday's New York Times.  The blurb kept expanding, as I thought of aspects of the book that I liked, to the point that I've decided to reverse my usual modus operandi, and copy and paste it from Goodreads to here.

I'm not really sure yet that the book -- or the review -- is fully blog-worthy, but what the heck.

Austin Szerba is a 16-year-old, small town, Iowa boy. Through a complex series of events, he triggers the creation of a genetically designed race of six-foot tall praying mantises, with exo-skeletons as strong as those of a Naval vessel, bugs who live only to eat and to mate, both of which they do ravenously. While he observes over a period of time virtually all his neighbors being slurped up alive, Austin finds himself worrying primarily about the fact that he's deeply in love, simultaneously, with both his girlfriend Shann and his gay best friend Robby. World cataclysm can't change the fact that he's sixteen and slave to his hormones.

This summary of the plot doesn't sound promising. But a NY Times book review compared the book favorably to the best of Kurt Vonnegut. For the most part, I agree.

While dealing with teenage love and the war against the "Unstoppable Soldiers," as the kids call the mutants, Austin speaks learnedly of historiography, causation, free will versus determinism, the history of Poland and of his own Polish ancestry, the life of St. Kazimierz, the cave drawings at Lescaux, rock music, Iowa sociology, Xanax, Lutheranism, and corporate greed. He also talks a lot about the science of the giant bugs, but you shouldn't take that seriously. He talks even more about his own sexual fantasies, but they are the sort that probably would be unexceptional for a very bright -- but sexually very confused -- Iowa boy.

We learn in the epilogue that Austin is writing his book, based on his exhaustive teenage diaries, at the age of 21 from the safety of an underground bunker, where he lives with Shann and Robby, Shann's parents, Robby's mother and her boyfriend, and Austin's own four-year-old son. So far as he can determine, the other 7 billion human beings have all become dinner for bugs. The Unstoppable Soldiers still roam the earth, seeking out whomever they can devour.

Austin wonders if humans had ever really learned anything essential, from generation to generation. How do we differ from our cave man ancestors? And how do we and those cave men differ from the Unstoppable Soldiers, obsessed only with eating and sex, other than the fact that we occasionally draw pictures on the walls of our caves in an attempt to make sense of it all? This book is Austin's attempt at cave drawing.

The book's subject is grim, but the treatment is humorous.

When he came out of the bathrooom, Grant Wallace [now transformed into an Unstoppable Soldier] ate his two younger brothers, his mother, and the family's Yorkshire terrier, which was named Butterfly.

That gives you a sense of the tone. Book is recommended for young adults, 14 and older. Most teenagers, and many adults, will love it. But I suspect that many parents of teenagers may think twice before suggesting it to their kids.