Well.
Roger Sutton read my book.
I do not know Roger Sutton, but I have seen photographs of him. It makes me feel kind of weird to think that Roger Sutton has read my book.
He wrote a review of it, as a matter of fact, that is going to appear in the Jan/Feb Horn Book Review.
The book he read is Stick.
I do not know if he has read any of my other books, but if he wants to, I would be okay with that.
Here is the Horn Book review of Stick:
Stick
by Andrew Smith
High School Feiwel 292 pp.
10/11 978-0-312-61341-9 $17.99
“Stick” is at least slightly better than his given name of “Stark,” but what he’s called is the least of this thirteen-year-old’s problems. Stick was born with only one ear, his narration occasionally spaced across the page to mimic his hearing, and his parents are secretly and sadistically brutal. For the slightest infraction of their petty and/or incomprehensible rules, Stick’s father will beat him and his older brother Bosten, a beating that is often followed by consignment to a locked room for a couple of days or even longer: “no lights, no nothing, not even any clothes; just a galvanized bucket to use for a toilet and a cot with one sheet.” Stick suspects that even worse is happening to his brother; after Dad finds out that Bosten is gay, both boys, separately, run away. The violence of the story is intense, but so is the deep loyalty between the brothers, and the melodrama of life at home is balanced by Stick’s sweetly nascent romance with a longtime female friend and both boys’ experience of true family love when they visit their Aunt Dahlia. She is perhaps impossibly benevolent, but, man, is she welcome. Readers who have appreciated Chris Crutcher’s and Adam Rapp’s forays into adolescent darkness will find themselves on uneasy but familiar ground. roger Sutton
Thank you very much for that, Mr. Sutton.
