I Crawl Through It

Starred review from June 15, 2015
If a story about two teens escaping from testing week in an invisible helicopter at the direction of a naked sculptor who hides in a bush sounds like something spun from a bad acid trip, this may not be the novel for you. But those who already feel that high school is an absurdist farce designed to make everyone crack under the pressure of AP exams, bomb threats, intruder drills, and peer judgment will easily relate to King’s (Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future) latest. Obsessed with biology, Stanzi is in love with Gustav, constructor of the invisible helicopter. Her best friend China’s response to personal trauma has been to swallow herself: “I just opened my mouth one day and wrapped it around my ears and the rest of me.” Lansdale is a pathological liar whose hair grows by feet every time she tells another whopper. All the novel’s action can be read as metaphor for modern ills. These are teens crying for help with no one, least of all their parents, listening. It’s bizarre, compelling, and not like anything else. Ages 15–up. Agent: Michael Bourret, Dystel & Goderich Literary Management.

July 15, 2015
A meditation on grief, guilt, and survival; King's most challenging work to date.Stanzi and her friends are damaged high school seniors in Pennsylvania, struggling to forge connections with one another and the often hostile world beyond. Gustav is building an invisible helicopter in his backyard. China's mother is "the neighborhood dominatrix." And Lansdale is a compulsive liar. School life is grim, dominated by safety drills, standardized tests, and an erratically high volume of bomb threats. Amid the disruption, there is also a naked man living in a bush who, in a series of surreal exchanges, sets each of the teens in motion. The intricately constructed narrative is deeply disorienting, not only because the narrators are all openly unreliable, but because the events they describe occupy a gray area bounded by personality quirks, mental illness, and magical realism. Coupled with repeated references to such real-life events as the Newtown and Columbine shootings, as well as the fictional violence inflicted on the main characters, the novel is, at times, a grueling march through a gallery of traumas. But as with Please Ignore Vera Dietz (2010), King's choices are neither gratuitous nor exploitative; when crucial details start falling into place around the halfway point, readers who hang in that far are rewarded with the self-actualization of finely wrought characters. Heavy stuff, as the title implies, and absolutely worthwhile. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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Starred review from July 1, 2015

Gr 9 Up-One character is building a helicopter that happens to be invisible. Another has turned herself into a walking digestive tract. The others are wrapped up in hair that grows with lies and a lab coat that can't be removed. Under the weight of their personal lives and the constant pressure of testing and bomb threats, four high school students crawl through a world that seems to threaten them at every turn. King has crafted a universe within these pages full of surrealist characters and twists-inside-out humans and escapes to locations that may or may not be real. She achieves a fine, delicate balance through her gutting prose and ensemble cast of hurt-filled characters. The broken feeling of the protagonists carries through the length of the book, yet the ending still concludes with a tone of redemption. At once a statement on the culture of modern schools as well as mental health issues, this novel is an ambitious, haunting work of art. VERDICT Give it to students who are ready for a darker version of Rebecca Stead's When You Reach Me (Random, 2009).-Erinn Black Salge, Saint Peter's Prep, Jersey City, NJ

Copyright 2015 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from August 1, 2015
Grades 9-12 *Starred Review* Four seniors try to escape personal traumas in the face of daily bomb threats at their high school. But who is behind the threats? King's newest novel crawls through the psyches of these teens seemingly in pursuit of this question, but quickly turns up many others, as well as answers to important questions that have gone unasked. At the center of the story is Stanzi, a biology genius who feels split in two and is forced on family vacations to sites of school shootings: I own the most morbid snow globe collection in the world. She is in love with Gustav, a physics genius (natch) busy building an invisible helicopter. China Knowles, meanwhile, has swallowed herself after a terrible experience with her boyfriend, becoming a walking digestive system. And Lansdale Cruise is a beautiful, pathological liar with long hair that grows like Pinocchio's nose. Characters unfold like riddles before the reader, while King uses magical realism and a motif of standardized testing to emphasize the flaw in obtaining answers without confronting reality's hard questions. Beautiful prose, poetry, and surreal imagery combine for an utterly original story that urges readers to question, love, and believeor risk explosion.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)