This was another book suggested for reading by James. This one was phenomenal. It was one of those books I was happy wasn't 1000 pages, not because 230 pages was enough, but only because I couldn't put it down. I've never been able to read 1000 pages straight, without sleeping. I could have easily gobbled up anything more that Barbara Hawother-Attard had told us about our protagonist's life. He was just that fascinating.
Dylan is a 16-year-old kid whose mom has decided he's inconvenient for the story she's telling the latest boyfriend. Dylan has to go, and she doesn't really care what happens to him after that. He's relegated to street life where he befriends good and bad while learning to navigate this entirely new world. There's no time for school, what with needing to beg for money and food and looking for places to sleep that won't end up with you on the wrong side of anybody. But he's a smart kid -- he wants to use that brain of his. As someone who's never lived on the streets, it seemed to be an appropriately alternating experience for him, from destroyed trust to hunger to opportunity to lost chances to self-discovery to rock bottom to second chances. I ached with him and rooted for him and found myself hoping desperately that he would find some sort of redemption through all of this.
Pick up a copy, and enjoying this journey of the human spirit. You might just find yourself volunteering at the local homeless shelter, and how can anything that makes you help your fellow man be bad?
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Cool! Glad you liked it. Have you read Flight or The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie? The kids who like Theories of Relativity also like those two, as did I.
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