Review by New York Times Review
In this fearlessly inventive novel, King creates a sharp, surrealist world out of the challenges of teenage life, from the darkest (school shootings) to the mundane (standardized tests). Stanzi is a 17-year-old science prodigy who never sheds her lab coat, lest the scars on her thigh start talking to her. Her friend Gustav is building a mostly invisible helicopter in the hope of escaping to an invisible destination. China, Stanzi's best friend, swallows herself in a different way each day (sometimes she's a "walking colon"; other times a "sad esophagus"). Then there's Lansdale, who fantasizes about older men and tells lies that make her hair grow. One of them is making bomb threats to their high school. Or all of them are. In short, choppy chapters mostly from Stanzi's or China's point of view, the teenagers interact with a weird man who hides in the bushes, naked under a trench coat, doling out answers to those omnipresent tests. Stanzi kisses him sometimes: "He knows he is the dangerous bush man as much as I know I'm Stanzi, a character in your book, a nobody and a somebody and really two people inside one body." As the search ramps up for the person behind the bomb threats, an air of chaos is belied by the taut, controlled narrative. You may be left wishing all the clues and symbols added up to a bigger emotional payoff, but King's devotion to a passionately experimental style, in a genre often beholden to formula, is inspiring. Kurt Vonnegut might have written a book like this, if he had ever been cyber-bullied on Facebook.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [November 24, 2015]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Four seniors try to escape personal traumas in the face of daily bomb threats at their high school. But who is behind the threats? King's newest novel crawls through the psyches of these teens seemingly in pursuit of this question, but quickly turns up many others, as well as answers to important questions that have gone unasked. At the center of the story is Stanzi, a biology genius who feels split in two and is forced on family vacations to sites of school shootings: I own the most morbid snow globe collection in the world. She is in love with Gustav, a physics genius (natch) busy building an invisible helicopter. China Knowles, meanwhile, has swallowed herself after a terrible experience with her boyfriend, becoming a walking digestive system. And Lansdale Cruise is a beautiful, pathological liar with long hair that grows like Pinocchio's nose. Characters unfold like riddles before the reader, while King uses magical realism and a motif of standardized testing to emphasize the flaw in obtaining answers without confronting reality's hard questions. Beautiful prose, poetry, and surreal imagery combine for an utterly original story that urges readers to question, love, and believe or risk explosion.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
If a story about two teens escaping from testing week in an invisible helicopter at the direction of a naked sculptor who hides in a bush sounds like something spun from a bad acid trip, this may not be the novel for you. But those who already feel that high school is an absurdist farce designed to make everyone crack under the pressure of AP exams, bomb threats, intruder drills, and peer judgment will easily relate to King's (Glory O'Brien's History of the Future) latest. Obsessed with biology, Stanzi is in love with Gustav, constructor of the invisible helicopter. Her best friend China's response to personal trauma has been to swallow herself: "I just opened my mouth one day and wrapped it around my ears and the rest of me." Lansdale is a pathological liar whose hair grows by feet every time she tells another whopper. All the novel's action can be read as metaphor for modern ills. These are teens crying for help with no one, least of all their parents, listening. It's bizarre, compelling, and not like anything else. Ages 15-up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-A relaxed view of reality is required from the opening words of big-boned Stanzi, in her always-present lab coat. Stanzi gets alphabet letters in exchange for kisses from the naked bush man outside of school. Gustav, her neighbor, is building a helicopter that is invisible to nearly everyone. Stanzi's friend China has swallowed herself and now displays her internal organs on the outside. Her friend Lansdale lies about pretty much everything. Stir together with pervasive school bomb threats, the pressure of standardized testing, references to Hawkeye Pierce and M*A*S*H, and the gradual peeling back of layers hiding the facts of tragic events. Some listeners will be fascinated, and others will likely be scratching their heads in confusion. Eventually, the four teens each crawl through toward recovery. King narrates the story with excellent rhythm and the right balance of disturbed participant and unsentimental storyteller. VERDICT Consider for large collections. The murky story line and flexible reality will appeal to a niche audience. Suggest to fans of Andrew Smith's The Alex Crow (Dutton, 2015) and King's earlier books, particularly Everybody Sees the Ants (Little, Brown, 2012). ["At once a statement on the culture of modern schools as well as mental health issues, this novel is an ambitious, haunting work of art": SLJ 7/15 starred review of the Little, Brown book.]-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Horn Book Review
Gustav is building an invisible red helicopter that Stanzi can see only on Tuesdays; China swallowed herself and is now inside-out; Lansdales hair grows when she lies. As their high school prepares its students for standardized testing, a string of bomb threats seems timed to ensure that Stanzi and her friends will never sit for these exams. Meanwhile, Stanzi and Gustav prepare to leave on his helicopter, possibly to The Place of Arrivals (there are no departures). Told primarily from the perspectives of Stanzi, China, and Lansdale, Kings novel blends the magical and the mundane in a deadpan delivery that makes it difficult to tell one from the other. This, of course, is the point of her ambitious and affecting work, which suggests that the personal tragedies and traumas we internalize change the ways we see and operate in the world. The main characters have, the novel reveals, been transformed in distinct ways by tragedy, and the effects of these experiences are evident in the narrative, making the story itself a challenging one to discern. Somewhere in every mind, the last pages of the book assert, is an opening to crawl through. Kings latest novel demands that readers search for this opening. amy pattee (c) Copyright 2015. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A meditation on grief, guilt, and survival; King's most challenging work to date.Stanzi and her friends are damaged high school seniors in Pennsylvania, struggling to forge connections with one another and the often hostile world beyond. Gustav is building an invisible helicopter in his backyard. China's mother is "the neighborhood dominatrix." And Lansdale is a compulsive liar. School life is grim, dominated by safety drills, standardized tests, and an erratically high volume of bomb threats. Amid the disruption, there is also a naked man living in a bush who, in a series of surreal exchanges, sets each of the teens in motion. The intricately constructed narrative is deeply disorienting, not only because the narrators are all openly unreliable, but because the events they describe occupy a gray area bounded by personality quirks, mental illness, and magical realism. Coupled with repeated references to such real-life events as the Newtown and Columbine shootings, as well as the fictional violence inflicted on the main characters, the novel is, at times, a grueling march through a gallery of traumas. But as with Please Ignore Vera Dietz (2010), King's choices are neither gratuitous nor exploitative; when crucial details start falling into place around the halfway point, readers who hang in that far are rewarded with the self-actualization of finely wrought characters. Heavy stuff, as the title implies, and absolutely worthwhile. (Fiction. 14 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
