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17. The Boy Who Couldn’t Sleep and Never Had To – DC Pierson

This book reads like it was written by someone who is too cool for school. The initial impression I got from the blurb of it seeming like a magical realism sort of sci fi teenage romp well written enough to be literary fiction is really inaccurate.

The science fiction bits come in toward the end and they don’t make up for the lack of cleverness and ingenuity with tired tropes. There was also a lot of space taken up by the main character wondering if making friends with the weird kid will also make him weird. Um, duh, kid, that’s the whole point of hanging with the weird kid…getting out of the banality. If you don’t want that, keep hanging with the stupid cool kids. An unwilling protagonist who spends too much time debating the risk of letting an actual story happen is a sad, sad thing in fiction. Bottom line for me was feeling like I’ve read this story before with less pretentious prose.

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Belvedere would’ve put this book in the “rejected MFA imitations of more interesting genre fiction” section of his library.