Stick

Andrew Smith writes young adult fiction. 

I've never read a satisfactory description of YA fiction, distinguishing it from adult fiction.  In Smith's case, the label may be applied because his protagonists are teenagers.  So was the protagonist in Richard Ford's Canada, but no one describes Canada as a YA novel.  Smith himself has stated that he never set out to write YA novels, as opposed to adult novels.  The label probably has more to do with the publisher's marketing plans than anything inherent in the supposed genre.

I've read six of Andrew Smith's novels, two of which I've reviewed in the Northwest Corner.  If my fondness for his books  makes me a "young adult," so be it.  I can live with it.

Aside from featuring teenaged protagonists, and from being exceptionally well written, his novels have little in common.  The two I previously reviewed contained elements bordering on fantasy (The Alex Crow) or were expressly works of fantasy (Grasshopper Jungle).  Two others were about a kid who plays rugby, describing with both humor and insight his difficulties in adjusting to his boarding school and to his classmates.  (Winger and Stand-Off).   100 Sideways Miles is an "absurdist" novel about a boy with epilepsy who has an unusual slant on the world, and about his relationship with the girl he loves and the best friend who may well be a bit insane.  The two rugby novels probably come closest to what people think of when they hear the term "YA fiction").

I've now just finished reading Stick, which is the most serious, the most moving, and the most difficult to forget of the six Smith novels that I've read.   The book is recommended for students ninth grade and above.  If I had a high school son or daughter, I would suggest this book to him or her without hesitation.  But many parents might find it objectionable.

"Stick" is the nickname of its eighth grade narrator, a boy with a birth deformity of his ear.  Stick and his  brother Bosten, three years older, are the embattled victims of parents who apparently never wanted to be parents, and who have no way of relating to their sons other than through liberal use of the belt. 

The story contains the language that high school boys freely use.  It also contains graphic descriptions of school yard fights and parental beatings, and less graphic descriptions of sexual episodes.  It contains a suggestion, a fairly clear suggestion, of parental sexual abuse  And it contains scenes of drug use (mostly pot). On the other hand, the book also provides one of the most moving descriptions of a bond between two brothers that I've ever read, and a touching description of an eighth-grader's sudden realization that his best friend Emily is also the girl that he loves.

The book is funny, even when it's grim, and the author's use of descriptive language is often eloquent.  The book takes place largely in Kitsap County, right up here in the Northwest Corner, which -- for me, at least -- added to its charm.

Without revealing more of the plot, or of the book's conclusion, I can only say that the ending is somewhat happy -- but the conclusion reminds us that, for many people, life offers no happy ending.

Some are born to sweet delight; 
Some are born to endless night.

Strong recommendation.