Thursday, June 27, 2013

Exploits of a Reluctant (But Extremely Goodlooking) Hero by Maureen Fergus

This review was originally published on my other blog in 2007.

Coming on the heels of reading two British school stories, reading this modern Canadian story is rather a shock. The narrator of this book. a thirteen year old boy, is an amazingly self-centered, obnoxious, clueless kid. The fact that, eventually, he reluctantly and more through accident than planning begins to have a conscience is gratifying, if not entirely convincing.

A brief outline of this book: boy and his mother and father move to take over management of a failing store owned by mother's mother. Obnoxious boy gets into trouble for theft and insensitivity to others and is forced by parents to volunteer at a local soup kitchen. Boy tries to get in good with both sides - the business side and the soup kitchen side, not out of conviction one way or the other, but out of sheer superficiality of who happens to have food, porn, or amusement available for him. Eventually, he has to take a stand and comes out in favor of the soup kitchen, but you are still left wondering if he really understands that he isn't the center of the universe.

The book is funny and the boy does have some good lines, but it is still disconcerting to me. Our modern "hero" is really a self-centered jerk. He does manage to gain a little bit of insight into how poor people live, but I could easily see that evaporating when something else becomes more interesting or important to his Royal Adolescence.

I don't really want goody-two-shoes modern heroes, but a little bit more understanding and less jerkiness would have been welcome. At least his two friends are a bit less callous. Maybe next time the story will be about them.

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