Into the Great Wide Open

Canty's greatest strength here is also the novel's greatest weakness. Writing unironically about teenage love, and from a first person point of view, he manages to transport readers right back to high school, and to those incredibly strong feelings enmeshed in the center-of-the-universe-and-knowing-it-all-feeling that comes from being seventeen. The problem is that he's writing about an incredibly average love between two frighteningly average people in a sadly average situation. Yes, they've got serious problems at home, like so many teenagers. Yes, they're got emotional problems, like so many teenagers. No, they don't know what comes next and they're worried about it, like so many teenagers. Yes, they take risks, and no, they don't show more think too much... All like so many other average teenagers.

In the end, this made me remember the feelings of highschool, and some of my friends, with a clarity I hadn't experienced with those years in some time. Yet, could I have had that clarity without the book, had I just sat back and remembered? Yes.

And because the book was so driven by those voices and that teenage angst, I was more than glad to finish it and leave it behind, only sorry that there was no non-anti-climactic ending to give it a little more heft. Simply, teenagers won't appreciate this, and adults will likely be bored by it sooner than later, if not actually annoyed.

Not recommended, I'm afraid, unless you simply want a fairly good example of a novel told from the point of view of a believable, and average, fairly unthinking highschooler. show less