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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO NOAH YORK:
"Anybody who tells you he doesn't have mixed feelings about his mother is either stupid or a liar."
"Real life seldom makes me cry. The only thing that gets to me is the occasional Kodak commercial."
"Sometimes I feel like Michelangelo, chiseling away at all the crap until nothing is left but the exquisite thing in the middle that no one else sees until it's uncovered for them."
"Anyway..."
Meet seventeen-year-old Noah York, the hilariously profane, searingly honest, completely engaging narrator of Bart Yates's astonishing debut novel. With a mouth like a truck driver and eyes that see through the lies of the world, Noah is heading into a life that's only getting more complicated by the day.
His dead father is fading into a snapshot memory. His mother, the famous psycho-poet, has relocated them from Chicago to a rural New England town that looks like an advertisement for small-town America—a bad advertisement. He can't seem to start a sentence without using the "f" word. And now, the very house he lives in is coming apart at the seams—literally—torn down bit by bit as he and his mother renovate the old Victorian. But deep within the walls lie secrets from a previous life—mason jars stuffed with bits of clothing, scraps of writing, old photographs—disturbing clues to the mysterious existence of a woman who disappeared decades before. While his mother grows more obsessed and unsettled by the discovery of these homemade reliquaries, Noah fights his own troubling obsession with the boy next door, the enigmatic J.D. It is J.D. who begins to quietly anchor Noah to his new life. J.D., who is hiding terrible, haunting pain behind an easy smile and a carefree attitude.
Part Portnoy, part Holden Caulfield, never less than truthful, and always fully human, Noah York is a touching and unforgettable character. His story is one of hope and heartbreak, love and redemption, of holding on to old wounds when new skin is what's needed, and of the power of growing up whole once every secret has been set free.
"Noah's blunt, funny and dead-on narrative will lend this memorable tale of
young-but-cynical love a fresh resonance with readers of all ages, gay or straight, male or female." —Brian Malloy, author of The Year of Ice
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 11, 2012 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9780758290021
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9780758290021
- File size: 328 KB
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Languages
- English
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Levels
- ATOS Level: 5.2
- Interest Level: 9-12(UG)
- Text Difficulty: 4
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Reviews
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February 15, 2003
Noah York is a closeted gay teenager with a foul mouth, a critical disposition, and plenty of material for his tirades. After his father dies, Noah's mother, a temperamental poet, takes a teaching job in a small New Hampshire town, far from Chicago and the only world Noah has known. While Noah gets along reasonably with his mother, the crumbling house they try to renovate quickly reveals dark secrets, via dusty Mason jars they discover interred between walls. The jars contain scraps of letters, poems, and journal entries, and eventually reconstruct a history of pain and violence that drives a sudden wedge between Noah and his mother. Fortunately, Noah finds an unexpected ally in J. D., a teenager down the street who has family troubles of his own. Rape and other physical violence, alcoholism, and incest--the novel describes these abuses in a brutal, matter-of-fact way that may leave some readers uncomfortable. Most of the time, however, Yates effectively captures the honest, sometimes silly, often tender interactions between his fragile characters.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2003, American Library Association.)
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