I finished reading this book last week, but wanted to take the time to digest what I’d read. I’m still not sure how to respond to the book. Having read the three follow-up essays in the novel, I have a better understanding of the time period, the groundbreaking place this book earned, and the seeming timelessness of the book and the story.
Written in the late 1960s and published just months before the infamous Stonewall Riots, I’ll Get There. It Better Be Worth The Trip. was a quiet force for change in young adult literature. It was one of the first young adult books, if not the first, to deal with homosexuality. And I felt it did so with a softness and quaintness that is often missing in the hyper-sexual hyper-hormonal way in which teen sexuality comes across in today’s media.
A friend in undergrad recommended I read this novel and I’m sad it took me this long to read it. The Namesake is one of the most beautifully and eloquently written novels I have read this year, if not ever.
I could be predictable and say the story is about the English patient, as the title suggests, or any of the main characters, but it’s not. It’s not even about living through World War II. To me this novel is about survival.
This is the story of Billy Argos, the boy detective. The way the book is put together is fascinating and reminded me a lot of Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. The chapters start at 31 and there are random pages with word formations or small paragraphs which was a bit annoying, but it added to the quirkiness of the book. Perhaps the most intriguing/annoying thing was the hidden message along the bottom of the pages. I of course had to figure it out because it was driving me nuts. The coded message is after the jump, but I didn’t decode it and left out a bit so you have to read the book yourself to find out. I did follow the instructions and we’ll see what happens.