2 posts tagged “lyga”
The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl continues.
And I'm realizing that the author is cheating. Actually, that's unfair, but the word seems still apt. One of the greatest barriers to progressing further with my attempted NaNoWriMo from last November, the one based loosely on my own high school life, was the troublesome use of past and present tense to express events ongoing and instances past. Do I write it all in the here and now? Or do I attempt to cast it all as a reminiscence? Barry Lyga doesn't concern himself with such bothersome troubles. Instead, he barrels head on through the story, keeping it in first person and giving us every moment right as it comes, unapologetically in the present. And when he must take time to delve into a little backstory, he does so through vignetted chapters with appropriate subtitles.
Fortunately, the read is a compelling one. An hour's reading pulled me through a good one-hundred pages, even with occasional interruptions. I should be done with the book within the week. So maybe the immediacy isn't so much of a bad thing.
However, the timing of this selection runs afoul of reality. In light of yesterday's shooting at VT, it is more than a little unsettling to meet the titular Goth Girl then read her exasperated observation of at-school life:
"Sometimes don't you just wish someone would break into school and kill all of them?"
Ominous.
It is oddly fitting that I turned the last page of Lamb just yesterday morning. A story about the life of Jesus, told from the point of view of his childhood best friend, finished just after breakfast on Easter morning. And yet, knowing the ending that was inevitable, the resolution seemed incredibly abrupt. I read Lamb on the advice of a friend. She agrees with me. For all of the humor and speculation, Lamb is deeply involved and perfectly detailed. Moore's imagined journeys of the Messiah-in-training (and his ridiculous (yet oddly noble) companion) are all so well-researched that none of them seem entirely impossible. The Bible itself offers little to bring the reader from his childhood to his adult ministry, so why wouldn't he have gone East? Studied with monks and observed mystics?
But when Moore returns the boys to Jerusalem, he seems to feel the compulsion of time gnawing at his writer's heels. Either that, or he wasn't sure just how to work with material that's tighter bound to Scriptural record. And as the Ending looms ever larger, time grows shorter and the plot proceeds quicker, almost stumbling over itself.
All in all, Lamb is an fine book, made all the better by my upbringing, by lessons learned for which Moore's tale offers likely origins. And it is very funny, irreverent in parts, while avoiding an outright sense of what any right-thinking person would call sacrilege.
Next book: The Astonishing Adventures of Fanboy and Gothgirl.
"It’s the tale of a 15-year-old outcast (“Fanboy”), who suffers from a miserable high school existence and depressing home life alleviated only by his dreams of a mint copy of Giant-Size X-Men #1 and Bendis reading his graphic novel at a local con. Then one day he meets Kyra, aka “Goth Girl,” and things go in a very strange, potentially dangerous direction."*
