Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse

Rating:
Summary: Realistic and well written
Review: This is a good story about a depressed teenaged boy. It's written like a poem through the entire book and it's really easy to understand. If you think you've got it bad, you should take a look at this guy's life.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting idea, with a mediocre story
Review: This story tries to be touching, cool, alienated and uplifting, at all at once, but it just doesn't work. The poems are original in verse, but the story itself is depressing and stereotyped. Cesar's father has run off. Cesar is a delinquent in a ghetto school, ruining his life quickly. But then after the Bad Experiences that Turn His Life Around, he realizes The Truth of Things and decides to Walk the Straight and Narrow Path. Indeed the poems are fresh, and different, and quick to read. It's easy to have empathy for Ceasr's frustration. But the author makes the mistake of using tons of gang lingo and terms, which are explained -horrors!- by footnotes, as though this were a clinical study of a wild animal (the teenager). After a few chapters, the reader no longer feels as though he is taking a rare look inside of a rare mind, trapped in pitifully normal circumstances. Instead, it seems as though one is merely watching a documentary on a bad little boy who learns from his mistakes and Lives Happily Ever After. Don't read this book for insight into the delinquent lifestyle. The book almost furthers the idea that one can do many drugs, and yet still have a brilliant mind. The story never makes up its mind as to its position on the Bohemian lifestyle, and that is where it falls short. Instead of a parable, or a biography, this book remains merely a book of freshly written, yet ultimately unfulfilling poems. Read it for the verse, and not the story.