The Alex Crow

there was a moment, while reading this, where i realized that this book's themes went much, much, deeper than teenage boys and euphemisms for masturbation. all i can say is andrew smith is really good at writing books that seem to be bawdy and hilarious, and then turn on you with a punch in the gut. all in all, a very good book.

I'd heard a lot of excited and good sounding things about 'The Alex Crow', but I never got around to reading it. It was only during the most chaotic and frenzied month of my life (hopefully exams will go easier next year ahahahaha) that I picked it out from a library discard pile and took it home. It was the sort of thing that I wanted to read, the kind of book that people would try and get me to read, because it seemed to vibe exactly with whatever vibes I gave off. I knew this because it had actually happened. Several times. Reading out loud is terrible. Except if you enjoy the sound of your own voice, I guess. I read the first four chapters of 'the alex crow' out loud as bedside reading. It was soon relocated to a table for better lit reading less than ten minutes after being picked up. 'the alex crow' is brilliant. every character gleams, and the writing? the writing is slick and superb, never prose-like and compared to other books, almost economical in it's word use, to a brilliant effect. that was last night. andrew smith's tone and word choices are always on point, and I found myself overcome with glee at the way that he welded each sentence together into paragraphs into one perfectly short novel. i haven't read a book like 'the alex crow' in a long time. it was fun to read. it was startling at some parts, heartbreaking like the cover promised in others, and insane. it was nothing like anything i'd read before- with the exceptions of a few genre defying stories- and i wanted to show it to everyone i knew, except than this wouldn't be a wonderful thing for me to have and hold for myself.