Joe Speedboat

Starred review from February 8, 2010
The first novel by prize-winning Dutch author Wieringa to be translated into English is a brilliant coming-of-age story with an outlandish twist: Frankie, the narrator, is paralyzed but for his right arm and unable to speak after a farming accident. But when wild child Joe Speedboat shows up in Frankie’s sleepy town, he gives Frankie a new lease on life. Together the boys navigate young adulthood, with crippled Frankie chronicling Joe’s adventures. Joe blows up a toilet at their school. He builds an airplane and takes Frankie along for the ride. Joe trains Frankie to become an arm wrestler with his one good arm, and Frankie makes a name for himself as a fierce competitor. It comes as no surprise that Frankie and Joe love the same girl, and while Joe is away on a quest to find his mother’s missing boyfriend, she shows Frankie that, in her own way, she loves them both. There are more coming-of-age novels than dikes in Holland, but this wonderfully weird novel is not one to miss.

April 15, 2010
Set in a Dutch farming community, this is the offbeat story of a group of boys searching for meaning. Our narrator, Frankie, has had a freak accident and was in a coma for 220 days; now he is confined to a wheelchair, with one good arm and a developing ability to write again. Hell-raiser Joe Speedboat, who arrived in town while Frankie was in the coma, has befriended the other boys. As they grow older, they have wild adventures that sometimes include their chair-bound buddy. Joe inspires Frankie to make use of his particular talents, providing a means for Frankie to employ his warrior creed (he's a follower of the samurai philosophy of Miyamoto Musashi). But when they both fall for the same young woman, P.J., it appears that their friendship is doomed. In the end, Joe is oddly more fragile than the disabled Frankie, though his insight into P.J. gives him an advantage. VERDICT Despite a somewhat pat ending and exclusively male viewpoint, the strength of the wacky characters and situations prevails. This work conjures John Irving's "A Prayer for Owen Meany" but with a lighter touch and is recommended accordingly.Henry Bankhead, Los Gatos P.L., CA

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2010
A 220-day coma brought on by a grisly suicide attempt leaves 13-year-old Frankie, mute, wheelchair-bound, and dependent upon people for everything down to unzipping his pants to pee. But adventure roars back into his life with the arrival of Joe Speedboat, a scrappy and dashing teen whose amateur bombs soon give way to grander schemes, such as building a functioning airplane so he can glimpse the neighbor who allegedly parades around nude. The triumph and tragedy that pepper the story feel authentically random, though the familiar coming-of-age structure lends the book a directionless, episodic feeluntil the second half, that is, when little Frankie becomes Frank the Arm, an arm-wrestling prodigy reared and managed by Mr. Speedboat himself. Shifting the action to smoky competition halls and the drama to a love triangle, Wieringas tale takes on the feel of a good road-trip novel perfectly suited to his cast of eccentrics. The setting of rural Holland is convincingly rendered, and the low-key freakishness (think Garp) keeps things at just the right degree of weird.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)