Compulsion

May 3, 2010
When Maya’s con-man father gets sent to federal prison, the scientifically minded 15-year-old decides to run away rather than face foster care. Nicole, a suicidal girl she meets at a group home, joins Maya as she travels from Nevada to Idaho to find an aunt she cannot even remember. As they sleep in abandoned buildings, face bullies, and scrounge for food, Maya searches for clues to her aunt’s whereabouts from letters she wrote to her dead mother. Readers will quickly understand the difficulty of Maya’s life on the streets, from the rats that crawl on her at night to failed attempts at shoplifting and seeing a friend get sick and die. There are warm moments, too, such as when she and her friends pretend to roast marshmallows under a starry sky, or when she finally admits that irritating-but-loyal Nicole has become her “favorite person.” Ayarbe’s (Freeze Frame) characters sometimes strain credibility—sweet Klondike, who has Tourette syndrome, never feels entirely authentic, for example. But the touching moments between Maya and Nicole will keep readers with them through their long journey. Ages 12–up.

April 1, 2011
A compelling entrée into the claustrophobic world of an OCD teen. On the field, in the hallway and to his one good friend, Luc, Jake is Magic Martin, quirky but respected star soccer player. Only his sister, Kasey, now a high-school freshman, knows the truth about his family: Money is tight, their mother is mentally ill and their father is running on a constant low boil. And no one but Jake knows that he is constantly at war with the "spiders" in his brain, battling their encroaching, strangling webs by obsessively monitoring and manipulating numbers. The author immerses readers in Jake's anxious reality. Each short chapter begins with the time, the digits of which add, subtract, multiply or divide into a prime number ("OK") or don't ("Fuck"). Tiny, mundane actions—tapping the beak of a lawn flamingo, touching a grandfather clock—become fraught with tension. The author deftly illustrates the impact of Jake's obsessions without relying on exposition; readers see through Jake's eyes the paramount importance of maintaining the "magic" and through their own eyes the hours upon hours lost to counting and tapping. The climax is both inevitable and gripping, and, although Jake longs for the day the spiders retreat for good, the conclusion that he must instead learn to cope with their presence comes as a relief to both readers and protagonist. Taut, suspenseful and well-realized. (Fiction. 14 & up)

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

June 1, 2011

Gr 9 Up-Told by the protagonist, using flashbacks and stream of consciousness, this story takes place over four days in the life of a teen with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Jake Martin is compelled to count, focusing on prime numbers. He can't leave the house without following his morning ritual. He is the star of the high school soccer team and they are poised to win their third straight championship, if only he can hold all the pieces of his life together for three more days. Readers are gradually clued in to deep secrets in the Martin family, but the nonlinear voice makes it difficult to follow all that is happening and has happened in Jake's life. His fear that he may be like his mother, a frightened ghost of a woman, keeps him from telling anyone about his compulsions and his obsession with primes. While it would be unrealistic to have a happy ending when so much is going wrong for Jake, the conclusion might make readers wish for more-more openness on Jake's part, more discernment on his father's part, more details on his mother's illness. While some readers may find the book confusing, the author succeeds at making it seem as though it were written by an OCD teen. A clever design touch: the chapters are numbered only with prime numbers.-Wendy Smith-D'Arezzo, Loyola College, Baltimore, MD

Copyright 2011 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 15, 2011
Grades 10-1 *Starred Review* With prime numbers rattling around inside his skull, Jake Martin narrates a week in the life of a teen struggling withand struggling to keep hiddenhis obsessive-compulsive disorder. His home life is kind of touchy. His mother is sick with her own mental illness, his father hopes hell get a soccer scholarship to secure his future, and his younger sister looks up to him as her ticket to popularity. As the compulsions pile up (incessantly checking the time and breaking it down into prime numbers, working through strict routines just to get out of the house in the morning, repeating a set of interactions with his sister), Jake convinces himself that observing all his little rites will mesh into a sort of magic release. And once the magic arrives, hell not only lead his soccer team to their third championship but he will keep his sister safe, and the steel webs constricting his brain will dissolve and let him become normal again. Ayarbe exercises both enormous skill and restraint getting to the root of just how debilitating OCD can become, juxtaposing descriptions of the ways the minds compulsions can trip a trap of mental and physical anguish against a complex, credibly casted portrayal of teen social dynamics, which are treacherous enough on their own. A gripping, claustrophobic read.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)