The Inexplicable Logic of My Life

With encompassing Love and Family hosted by Vicente, Sal, Sam, and Fito search for what can make sense in their lives and futures.

Opening chapter is pretty amazing lead in...so much that when I went to add the review
(Pandemic somehow yielded 40 unreviewed, but well-read volumes), I read the book again.

Short chapters will be welcome to middle and high school readers.

"Mima says we are what we remember."

While drawn to both Sal and Vicente, the low-driving subplot of not opening the letter goes on too long.
As well, Marcos excuses felt phony...still not sure we should trust him. No bueno?

Saenz has created yet another book that I don't ever want to end without a promise of a sequel!

Best friends since Kindergarten, Sal and Sam are opposites. Sal (Salvador) is quiet and kind, raised by a loving, adoptive Dad. Sam (Samantha) is loud and outspoken, her single Mom a distant addict. Now in their senior year, Sal is overwhelmed by change: his beloved grandmother is dying; a letter from his Mom, who died when he was three, that he’s afraid to open; and he and Sam are astounded to find him speaking out with his fists.

So much wisdom, kindness, humor, and beautiful writing. I want to read it again and underline favorite passages. I couldn't stop long enough on the first reading as I was so caught up in the lives of the characters, their heartaches and joys. I wanted to meet Sal’s grandmother, Mima, and hear her stories show more “… as real as anything, as real as the leaves on her mulberry tree.” I also wanted to meet Fito, the poor, Mexican-American kid from a dysfunctional family who defied stereotypes in holding down two jobs, doing well in school, and being a nice guy. The best book on teen and family relationships that I've ever read. show less

https://iwriteinbooks.wordpress.com/2018/05/31/the-inexplicable-logic-of-my-life...

I have this dear friend who has a terrible habit of recommending the most heart-wrenchingly beautiful books.

Every time, I think I know what I’m getting into.

Every time, I end up a sobbing pile of tears on the floor.

This one, I should have seen coming. It is the latest book from Benjamin Alire Saenz (of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe fame) so I knew I would need tissues even without the aforementioned friend’s stamp of emotional approval.

That blessed man understands how to write people better than almost anyone I’ve come across.

In this particular story, there was no center around the protagonist’s romance but he seemed show more locked in the middle of everyone else’s. That was sort of a beautiful thing, to see love budding around in various forms but not have the entire story centered around love and lust.

In its simplest form, Saenz tells the story of a little boy living and coming of age with his single, gay dad. It is so much deeper and bigger than that, though. for the bulk of the story, that little boy, now 17-year-old Sal, is on a warpath to simultaneously figure out who he is and pay absolutely no attention to who he is.

The entire piece is an ode to the beauty and complications of family, in all of its myriad forms. The family we are born with, the family we stumble upon, and of course, the family we choose. There is also a good deal of discussion about identity and ethnicity as Sal is the only non-Mexican wrapped up in his family and friend group. That portion of the story is wound so seamlessly into the body of the book that is at once always present and yet, quietly lingering in a sort of invisible way.

Overall, this is such a breathtakingly beautiful book and I highly recommend it. Of course, you will need at least one big box of tissues. There. Now you’ve been warned. show less

YA FICTION
Benjamin Alire Sáenz
The Inexplicable Logic of My Life
Clarion Books
Hardcover, 978-0-5445-8650-5, (also available as an e-book, an audio book, and on Audible), 464 pgs., $17.99
March 7, 2017

“just because my love isn’t perfect doesn’t mean I don’t love you”

Seventeen-year-old Salvador “Sally” Silva likes his life. What he doesn’t like is change. Beginning his senior year at El Paso High School, Sally has a great relationship with Vicente, his adoptive father; a steadfast best friend of many years, Samantha “Sammy” Diaz; and a loving extended family of aunts, uncles, cousins, and his grandmother Mima. But when Sally, an easygoing guy with “a control thing over [himself]” who prefers “keeping it calm,” show more gets into a fistfight on the first day of school, he begins to wonder about his “bio father” for the first time, and doubting that he really knows himself at all. “Maybe the kind of guy I was was like someone I didn’t know,” Sally thinks. “You know, the guy I’d never met whose genes I had.” Then Sally’s Mima gets sick, his father’s former boyfriend returns, and his friends’ lives are turned upside down, forcing Sally to confront impending adulthood and question what it means to be a man.

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is the new young-adult novel from PEN/Faulkner award-winning Benjamin Alire Sáenz. This is a heartwarming coming-of-age story in which Sáenz inhabits Sally on the cusp of “life beginning,” bringing his first-person narration uncannily alive in beautifully rendered relationships.

Sally wants the human heart to make rational sense, but he and his friends learn that there are as many ways of loving as there are people on the planet. Mima feeds people; Vicente loves his sports-loving brothers by reading the sports pages of the newspaper so he can have a conversation with them; Uncle Mickey loves by slipping money into the hands of his nieces and nephews. Sally discovers “love is difficult and complicated,” and that love, not blood, creates a family.

These characters are sharply delineated individuals. Sammy is beautiful, smart, ambitious, and emotionally volatile. “She could be a storm. But she could be a soft candle lighting up a dark room.” Vicente is a Columbia-educated painter and professor of art, a gay Mexican American who loves art because “it civilized the world.” Fito is an “intellectual” who ends every other sentence with “and shit,” who walks “like a coyote looking for food” and whose mother barters her Lone Star card for meth.

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is a long book, but a quick read; it just flows. Language and the magic of words are important to these characters, and Sáenz’s choices are precise. His teenage dialogue sounds authentic, especially the “verbal volleyball” between Sally and Sammy. Happily, El Paso is a presence in this story. “I like that you could see and smell the border in the air and on the streets,” Sally says, “and in the talk of the few people we passed who spoke the special kind of language that wasn’t really Spanish and wasn’t really English.”

I will miss these characters. To paraphrase Sally, I like who these kids are becoming. Sáenz has done the thing that is the reason for fiction.

Originally published in Lone Star Literary Life. show less

Another Wonderful Book

The Inexplicable Logic of My Life is moving at times, sad at others, frequently funny, incredibly honest and believable and fully demonstrates the talents of an author who understands his characters. Throughout this book, the redemptive power of love flows, seeping into the lives of others whose only choice is then to pass it along. In this book, there are characters who have experienced love their whole lives, others who should have been loved, but who were mistreated by those who should have loved them, and others wounded and damaged by abuse. The father of the central character, a gay man, took in everyone who was hungry for love and shared his own, demonstrating that “love is only love when you give it away, show more and that in giving love both the lover and the beloved are enriched.
I usually give my star ratings much more because of the quality of the writing than for the excellence of the story line. In this case, the book would receive high ratings by any measure.
It is the second book by Benjamin Saenz that I’ve read, a small inroad into the number of them that I hope to read. show less

After reading Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, any book by Benjamin Saenz was a must-read for me. I grew up in El Paso, the setting of both books, and love that I recognize street (Alameda), restaurant (Ardivino's Pizza and Chico's Tacos) and school (El Paso High School & UTEP) names that are mentioned. The book is extremely well-written, and I fell in love with all of the characters. I felt as if I was watching through a window the entire time, experiencing what Salvador, Samantha and Fito endured. This title just arrived for our teen library collection, and I'm happy to have it on the new arrivals shelf!

This book is an absolutely heartrending exploration of identity, family, and friendship, and I am so incredibly glad I read it. I really don't believe I have the words to properly describe how beautiful this book was, so I'll just leave it short. Saenz's writing is simple yet so, so full of feeling, and everything about Sal's story - his friends, Sam and Fito; his family, Mima and Vincente and Marcos; the mystery surrounding his adoption and mother.... I haven't felt so much for a group of characters for a long time.