Calvin Walker
Andrew Smith – The Alex Crow
I picked up Andrew Smith’s The Alex Crow and Grasshopper Jungle from the freebie table at the aforementioned magazine gig and I’m glad I did! Grasshopper Jungle was an easy read that provided a few welcomed chuckles during my commute to work. The subject matter, two teenage boys who end up saving the world from grasshopper like aliens, is a little out there but it’s such a good book. I can’t recall too many other works of mainstream fiction revolving around a sexually confused teenage boy who calls out how horny both his guy friend and girlfriend make him and how he longs to just have a threesome with them both. Or mainstream works of fiction about sexually confused guys in general.
With such a positive reaction to my first Andrew Smith novel, I’m anticipating diving into The Alex Crow, a book inspired by his personal experiences teaching immigrant high school students. He says that he “felt strongly motivated to tell this story of a refugee kid who is just looking for a place where he belongs, overwhelmed by the strangeness — the insanity — of modern America.”
Despite not being photographed with the other books above, I’m making the executive decision to read this before most of the others.
