i have a phoenix

I'm generally not a reader of graphic novels, but I liked this premise enough that I picked this one up when I heard about it at a YA literature workshop I attended in December. It's a short boy-meets-girl story whose only words are taken from song lyrics. When Boy sees Girl in the Sad Café, for example, the page reads, "And then I saw her face..." When Boy is angry at Girl, he yells, "De-doo-doo-doo, de-da-da-da, is all I want to say to you!" When Girl is caught cheating on Boy, she says, "Oops, I did it again." Their first date happens at MacArthur Park, and when Boy stays in a mental hospital for a while, his room is labeled "Soft Cell." Very cute. Sure, the lyrics used were a little Eagles-intensive, but whatever.

This is the story of fifteen-year-old David, who lives with his mother and his seven-year-old sister Janie. David's dad, Max, was an abusive drunk that left the family a few years before the story begins. David has a quick temper himself and takes some shit at school for standing up to a bully that's picking on another kid. In the middle of all this, David's mom announces she's trying to work things out with Max, and they all have dinner tomorrow and David can't decide if Max has truly changed or if he, David, is just a pussy for thinking that.

So Max takes David and Janie on a camping/canoeing trip, and they run into a bunch of assholes with their own internal drama, i.e. some of them are stealing from the meat-packing plant at which they work, and they think one of their number has ratted them out. The assholes decide David and his family know too much about them, so they set out to kill them. The rest of the book is action-packed, with David taking charge of moving his badly wounded father and sister via damaged canoe to try to find shelter and medical care while simultaneously avoiding the four dickheads. And then it starts snowing, and no one's prepared for it, and it gets very intense and riveting.

Parts of the book are pretty bad. It started out very slow, and I thought about abandoning it a few times. And many of the descriptive passages are overwrought as fuck; I can't believe Johnson's editor let them stay. Still, the second half moves quickly and is written well, and I cared a fuck of a lot about David by the end. His incredible tenderness for his little sister made me love her too.

The best part by far, though, was the interaction between David and Max. David resents Max for beating him up occasionally when he was younger, but Max does show signs of changing. But then Max will be in a bad mood and will revert to his old ways; he doesn't become violent, but he's aggressive and unable to take criticism, and there are times when David really needs Max to be able to accept constructive advice, like when Max buys all the wrong supplies for a camping trip and David, the experienced outdoorsman, knows better but is afraid to say so. What's especially well-done here is David's range of emotion: he wants the family to have the right gear for their trip, but he doesn't want to piss off Max, and he also doesn't want to be a wimp that doesn't stand up to his dad, especially when his younger sister's first camping experience and perhaps even safety are at stake, but he really does want to get along with him for the sake of their mom and Janie, and he also wants his dad to acknowledge his greater familiarity, and...you just know the author has been in a situation like this himself, and he renders it beautifully.

So in the interim between my last post and today, I've (1) had a kidney infection that wiped me out for a week or so; (2) begun nonstop Mardi Gras festivities; and (3) gotten thoroughly sick of book reviews. And I've begun to miss my old blog, the one that got me into Big Trouble at work. So, while I will continue to update this space on occasion, I proudly unveil I Been Havin' a Snake.