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Summary
Summary
"Did you really rescue your mother from a fate worse than death on a cliff overlooking the sea?" After a mysterious accident left him paralyzed, sixteen-year-old Joseph finds himself living with his father in Minneapolis and working hot summer days in a bakery. What happened to the life he used to live? How did he come to be here? Although they approach the mystery in different ways, two people in Joseph's new life - seventeen-year-old Zap, who also works in the bakery, and Enzo, a fierce and funny nine-year-old girl - both want to find out. "Are you really a superhero?" whispers Enzo, who secretly longs for her world to be transformed. "Please be a superhero." Stoically quiet, Joseph has never thought of himself as a superhero, especially now that he is in a wheelchair and can't feel his legs. But others disagree. Who is the hero? Who is the enemy? Is redemption possible, and if so, where is it to be found? In Alison McGhee's strange and powerful Falling Boy, a small band of tough kids turn the myth of the superhero inside out as they face down the shadows of childhood.
Author Notes
Alison McGhee lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
She is the recipient of a Loft-McKnight Fellowship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a 1995 Editor's Fiction Prize from Snake nation, and a Pushcart Prize honorable mention. Her title Bink and Gollie, Two for One with Kate DiCamillo made The New York Times Best Seller List for 2012.
(Publisher Provided)
Reviews (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
A late adolescence of fierce, sweet turmoil provides the inspiration for McGhee (Shadow Baby), who also writes YA novels. His legs recently paralyzed in an accident, 16-year-old, wheelchair-bound Joseph works in a Minneapolis bakery with Zap, a boy of 17, and is pelted with questions by Enzo, a girl of nine whom no one seems to be looking after. After the accident, Joseph left upstate New York and his troubled mother to live with a father he barely knows. Enzo, who desperately wants Joseph to be a superhero hurt performing a feat of derring-do, persists in trying to unravel the accident's mystery. Mai, a lovely teenage girl with a growing crush on Joseph, and her younger brother, Cha (who is locked in an interior world of his own, add to the mix. McGhee renders their insular world delicately, but the narrative gets saturated with that world's atmosphere, and the characters often come across as too young for their years. Readers willing to suspend some disbelief will be charmed by McGhee's tender and affecting coming-of-age tale. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Please be a superhero. Please, says 9-year-old Enzo to 16-year-old Joseph. Wheelchair bound after an accident he rarely discusses, Joseph works in a Minneapolis bakery where Enzo spends her summer days. Zap, the 17-year-old son of the bakery's owner, holds court at the pastry counter, sparring with Enzo and spinning tales about Joseph, turning the paraplegic teenager into a flying, mythical hero. McGhee, whose previous books include Shadow Baby (2000), returns to familiar themes in this story of children and young adults trying to piece together a workable life despite the absent and ineffectual adults who surround them. McGhee unveils her story at a dreamlike pace, and she weighs her characters with so much secrecy and mannered speech that impatient readers may feel distanced. The unusual dialogue, though, sets an almost magical, hallucinatory tone that will ultimately pull readers into deeper themes of love and obligation, failure and rescue, and into the personal stories, false and true, that order the world and, when shared, bring redemption. --Gillian Engberg Copyright 2007 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-Two boys work in a Minneapolis bakery-Zap, whose father owns it, and Joseph, recently paralyzed and in a wheelchair. Their most regular customer, Enzo, is an overtly angry nine-year-old who insists on being called the Mighty Thor, and who endlessly clicks her mechanical pencil. The book unfolds slowly as readers learn about these damaged kids, while the adults stay on the periphery. These adults never even get names; they are called "The Figurehead" and "the old guy," with one exception, John Schaefer, the man who investigated Joseph's accident, who is only referred to in the boy's memory. No one knows what really happened, but Enzo is determined to find out, while Zap tells everyone that Joseph is a superhero who can fly, and who fell off a mountain. McGhee's style is at times reminiscent of David Almond's, with the realistic yet magical setting transferred from the Northern England wilderness to an urban setting. Other times, it skirts art movie pretensions, especially when adults pop up and make obtuse statements, then disappear. All of the questions are eventually answered, and, despite the sad subject matter, the end gives the characters hope. Though the mystical metaphor sometimes comes on a bit strong, sensitive teens could easily be drawn into this story of emotionally compromised kids.-Jamie Watson, Harford County Public Library, MD (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
A wheelchair-bound teenager learns to survive the damage he's suffered, emotional as well as physical, in this slight but highly wrought story from McGhee (Was It Beautiful?, 2003, etc.). While his father sleeps or drinks, 16-year-old paraplegic Joseph spends his days working at a bakery/caf with 17-year-old Zap, the owner's son. Zap's Pied Piper charisma works on all the customers but Enzo, a nine-year-old girl who appears to have nothing to do all day but hang out at the bakery and bicker with Zap, to whom she directs an intense sibling love-hate. Zap, who gives nicknames to everyone, calls Joseph "Flying Joseph" and tells Enzo that Joseph is a hero. Enzo, who calls herself Mighty Thor, desperately wants Joseph to be more, a superhero with superhuman healing powers. Joseph denies any heroism in himself. He also refuses to discuss how he ended up in a wheelchair and why he has left his mother in Utica, N.Y., to live in Minneapolis with his father, a functional alcoholic who works nights as the oven man at the bakery. The story of Joseph's accident gradually takes shape. When his father left a year earlier, Joseph had to take care of his increasingly unbalanced mother. He had no room for friends or a life of his own. In a moment of derangement, his mother broke his spine by inadvertently knocking him from the top steps of a sliding board into a cement wading pool filled only with fresh snow. In the romanticized, claustrophobic world of Joseph, Zap and Enzo, adults are generally absent and/or untrustworthy, so children must look after each other. The jarring contradiction is that Joseph's great sorrow is the loss of his mother, who now resides in a mental hospital. McGhee is a gifted writer, but clever word play and a plethora of pointed metaphors are not enough to bring her fictional world to life. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
