Eighteen-year-old "Jersey boy" Cliff Sparks is a charming narrator, even if he is rather obsessed with breasts and other female body parts--especially how they magically combine in a new girl at Rismore High named Jillian. Cliff was once described by a classmate as having "the aquiline visage of a second-rate medieval scholar or perhaps a rabid possum." The paradoxes continue. He exalts painting, yet considers tattooing the phrase "And so it goes" from Slaughterhouse-Five on his stomach so he can have a "Vonne-gut." He's a hopeless romantic who can easily sink to the "lowest lizard level." His best friends are the Jamaican-born Robert and elfin-white-long-haired Butch, who "worked with sighs the way Van Gogh worked with swirls of raw sienna and Prussian blue." Butch and Robert stand by Cliff as he clumsily, yet steadily, pursues Jillian; steels himself against his father's open contempt; and tries to survive school while working two part-time jobs.
Character, Driven by David Lubar (Hidden Talents; Flip)--a poignant, entertaining literary ride--begins with Cliff's "crazy-drunk stepfather" beating him with a belt. But then, unsettlingly, Cliff says that didn't actually happen. "Do I have your attention?" he writes. "Good. That's crucial. Grab the reader with the first sentence." Lest readers fear such an "untrustworthy guide" might be annoying, worry not. The truth is, Cliff is a compassionate and principled person who stands up to bullies and tries to make sense of the suffering all around him--a young man who, once he gets past the "slow, low-level pain" of daily existence, will someday make the world a better place. --Karin Snelson, children's & YA editor, Shelf Awareness