Oye. Someone wrote a young adult novel that a boy might read. This is significant. You have Robert Cormier for this, you have Gordon Korman, and now, you have Coert Voorhees.
The Brothers Torres (Coert Voorhees) is --yes-- a story about a boy who likes a girl, but probably it's even more about a boy who worries about his older brother. Aha, a slight twist on the old sibling story.
Francisco Torres or, if you want to anglicize it, Frankie Towers, lives in two worlds. You can tell by his name. Part Hispanic, part Anglo and living in New Mexico, he is a waiter in his family's restaurant (think sopaipillas) and trying to make it through high school in an environment full of Varsity-type white boys and gangster-type cholos. (I can see you, my friend A____, rolling your eyes at the earnestness of other-language italics. You'll have to get over it for this book.)
So Frankie is worried about Steve, who is his older brother and one of the school's soccer stars. Steve, of course, is also living in two worlds, but it seems that the Hispanic one he's chosen is getting dark and sinister. In the past, little Frankie has usually ended up doing just what his big brother did before him, without much thought otherwise. So Frankie doesn't have much experience going his own way, but it's beginning to look like he might have to try it. And, really it's an awkward time, because there's this girl he likes and he really can't waste time looking stupid, especially since white-boy bully John Dalton is closing in on Rebecca too...
You get the picture. Really the best thing about this book is Frankie's inner voice. Yes, the dialogue is pretty great too, and often incredibly funny, but it's when Frankie is thinking to himself that you really feel you're getting an authentic glimpse into a certain kind of [astute] teenage mind:
My dad motions for me to sit down in one of the booths. "Why don't we have
a little chat , son." I love my dad, right? But it's like he's learned how to be a father by reading self-help books. He tries hard, so you can't fault him for that. But any time he has to talk about something other than the restaurant menu or Steve's soccer games, he turns into a caricature of a concerned parent. Everything is so meaningful and special that nothing is meaningful or special anymore.
This is a perfect reminder of how you should never underestimate a child just because he or she is smaller and has seen fewer winters. Younger, more mentally elastic: always thinking, thinking, thinking. The problem happens with all the zinging and firing in the average teenage mind. Too much input is hard to sort.
But Frankie does all right. He also shares a few interesting thoughts about small business, classicism, racism, stereotypes. But not so much that you aren't also allowed to enjoy passages like this one:
You know those movies where the hot chick has a couple friends who are almost as hot but not quite? They always walk in slow motion with the hottest one in the lead, like a squadron of attack planes in V-formation? Rebecca could make that happen if she wanted to. But she doesn't need that kind of attention, and Katie seems to want it, so Katie's the one in front. The other chick is Andromeda Escalante, but she's not even in Katie's league, no matter how many upperclassmen she's yanked off already.
Fun stuff.
I mean, I'm a self confessed
Voorhees fan already, but now I know it's justified. Nice work,
ese.