Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Starred review from June 24, 2013
Quick’s books typically revolve around characters who don’t fit in, don’t understand their place in the world, and face daunting obstacles. Leonard Peacock is another such individual, a teenager who feels let down by adults and out of step with his sheeplike classmates. Foreseeing only more unhappiness and disappointment in life (and harboring a secret that’s destroying him), Leonard packs up his grandfather’s WWII handgun and heads to school, intending to kill his former best friend and then himself. First, though, he will visit the important people in his life: an elderly cinephile neighbor, a musically gifted classmate, the teacher of his Holocaust studies class, and a homeschooled girl who passes out religious tracts in the train station. Quick’s attentiveness to these few key relationships and encounters gives the story its strength and razorlike focus. Its greatest irony is that, despite Leonard’s commitment to his murder-suicide plan, he appreciates and values life in a way that few do. Through Leonard, Quick urges readers to look beyond the pain of the here and now to the possibilities that await. Ages 15–up. Agent: Douglas Stewart, Sterling Lord Literistic.

Leonard Peacock is a complicated character, and narrator Noah Galvin quickly conveys his disturbing emotions. On his eighteenth birthday, a day his mother forgets to remember, Leonard plans to kill his former best friend and then himself. There's drama in the situation, and Galvin portrays Leonard's quick changes from hot, vengeful anger to cold, sarcastic distance as well as his flashes of longing and sadness. As Leonard delivers gifts to four people who improved his "worthless" life, Galvin marks Leonard's mix of self-loathing, tenderness, and regret. Galvin's success is in unifying the many facets of the book. He integrates the book's narrative and footnotes seamlessly, and, more importantly, he connects the many feelings and tones into a powerful whole with a haunting ending. S.W. 2014 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

Starred review from August 1, 2013

Gr 10 Up-Leonard Peacock has big plans for his 18th birthday. He plans to kill Asher Beal and then commit suicide. Leonard is a loner, an outcast, a misfit. Asher is a superpopular jock/bully. But they used to be friends, best friends. Something happened when they were 12, something bad. Leonard has had no one to confide in-his washed-up rock-musician dad is on the lam and his self-absorbed, oblivious mother forgets that she has a son. His anger, emotional pain, and brokenness build until he feels there is nothing left to do but end his life and the cause of his misery. As he gives gifts to the four people who mean something to him, he reveals some of his anguish. One recipient, his teacher Herr Silverman, picks up on his suicidal signals and offers the listening ear Leonard so desperately needs. As the heartbreaking climax unfolds, readers learn about the sexual and emotional trauma the teen has endured. Fortunately, there is no bloodshed, just the shedding of many overdue tears. Leonard knows he needs help and readers will hope he gets it. This is a difficult, yet powerful, book. Quick's use of flashbacks, internal dialogue, and interpersonal communication is brilliant, and the suspense about what happened between Leonard and Asher builds tangibly. The masterful writing takes readers inside Leonard's tormented mind, enabling a compassionate response to him and to others dealing with trauma. May there be more Herr Silvermans willing to take personal risks to save the Leonard Peacocks.-Lisa Crandall, formerly at the Capital Area District Library, Holt, MI

Copyright 2013 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

June 15, 2013
A teen boy with a World War II pistol in hand is bent on murder and suicide. Leonard Peacock has big plans for his birthday: He's cut his longish hair down to the scalp, wrapped some going-away presents for his friends and tucked his grandfather's souvenir Nazi-issue P-38 pistol into his backpack. He's off to school, but he plans to make some pit stops along the way to see his friends, including his elderly, Bogart-obsessed neighbor. After he gives his gifts away, he'll murder Asher Beal, another boy at school. Then he'll off himself. To say Quick's latest is dark would be an understatement: Leonard is dealing with some serious issues and comes across as a resolutely heartless killer in the first few pages. As the novel progresses and readers learn more, however, his human side and heart rise to the surface and tug at readers' heartstrings. The work has its quirks. Footnotes run amok, often telling more story than the actual narrative, and some are so long that readers might forget what's happening in the story as they read the footnote. Some readers will eat this up, but others will find it endlessly distracting. Other structural oddities include letters written by Leonard to himself from the future; they seem to make no sense at first, but readers find out later that his teacher recommended he write them to cope with his depression. Despite these eccentricities, the novel presents a host of compelling, well-drawn, realistic characters--all of whom want Leonard to make it through the day safe and sound. An artful, hopeful exploration of a teen boy in intense need. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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August 1, 2013
Grades 8-11 It's Leonard's eighteenth birthday and, big surprise, nobody remembered. This birthday, however, is going to countbecause Leonard plans to shoot cruel bully (and former best friend) Asher Beal after school. First, though, there is the small matter of gift giving, in which Leonard delivers four presents to the four people who made his worthless life a little better: a noir filmloving neighbor, a violin prodigy classmate, a superhot teen evangelist, and his favorite teacher. The single-day time frame provides a good deal of claustrophobic tension, as readers will hope against hope that one of these four people will be able to deflect Leonard from his mission. But this is far from a thriller; Quick is most interested in Leonard's psychology, which is simultaneously clear and splintered, and his voice, which is filled with brash humor, self-loathing, and bucket loads of refreshingly messy contradictions, many communicated through Leonard's footnotes to his own story. It may sound bleak, but it is, in fact, quite brave, and Leonard's interspersed fictional notes to himself from 2032 add a unique flavor of hope.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)