Parenthetical.net

Fanboy (we never learn his real name) is a fifteen-year-old loner. His only friend is Cal, who shares his love of superhero comics and intellectual conversation, but since Cal’s also an athlete, they move in different social universes. His mother has remarried “the step-fascist” and they’re having a baby, so Fanboy feels like he’s been pushed out of his family. All his dreams are tied to Schemata, the graphic novel he’s writing and drawing. He plans to show his Schemata portfolio to his hero, comics writer Brian Michael Bendis, at an upcoming con — at which point Bendis will immediately faint in awe, call his publisher, and sweep Fanboy away from small-minded South Brook forever.

The thing I loved about this book is the same thing that bugged me about it: its lack of easy solutions to the characters’ problems. On the one hand, Fanboy’s steps toward self-determination are realistically small, yet totally satisfying. On the other hand, there aren’t any explanations — easy or otherwise — for some things that really should have been explained. (His mother’s pathological insistence that he must never invite anyone over, for instance, which I kept expecting to be a big deal because it seemed so unavoidably odd.) A gun is — literally — shown in the first act that never goes off in the third. These strike me as newbie mistakes, so I look forward to reading Lyga’s next book.

Also, notice how I wrote that whole premise without mentioning one of the two title characters? Goth Girl is interesting, to be sure, and such a whackjob that (as my friend Perich wrote about Heath Ledger’s Joker) “you never sit easy when she’s on screen.” But to me (and I suspect this is just me) she felt ancillary to Fanboy’s growing-up process at the center of the story.

I loved all the real-world comics name-dropping — Barry Lyga worked in the industry for years, according to his bio, and he knows his stuff. (If you’re not a comics fan, you might find that a sticking point, the way I always do with the descriptions of games in sports novels.) Everything felt believable (except the parents — why are parents always the hardest part of a YA novel?), even if it didn’t always hang together novelistically.

Ultimately, I think what kept me from falling in love with the book is my lack of misanthropy, or even memory of high school misanthropy. I was a geek in school (oh, who am I kidding with the past tense there?), and there were phases where I had no friends. But the truth is that those phases passed by 5th grade, after which, despite my insecurity about it all, I always, always had someone (usually a bunch of someones) to hang out with. That’s right: I’m a geek poseur.

I kind of hate to say this, because it conflicts so much with my image of my younger self, but the truth is that I find it dreary and incomprehensible to read about kids who are this miserably lonely. It breaks my heart, but I want to roll my eyes at the same time and say, “Get over yourself.” (Which is pretty much what Cal does at the end of the book, so yay for Cal!) I guess I have officially grown up too much to empathize with my inner lonely teenager.

Oh, and confidential to Barry Lyga: Schemata sounds AWESOME. Y is over, Ex Machina is wrapping up, Speed only publishes a new Finder like once every five years, and even the guy at the Picnic yesterday couldn’t come up with anything he thought I’d like that I’m not already reading. Please, please write it! It’ll be like a whole lit-verite viral marketing thing. Love, me