Using colloquial language that gives him lots of character but is sometimes tough to interpret, 15-year-old Wes recalls in diary form his older brother's slide into schizophrenia. Wes remembers what Ash was like before (beloved, smart, tough) and after (a frightening presence who talked to himself, hurled vicious insults, and bashed his skull against a door to still the voices in his head). The boys' hardworking, small-town Maine family is an integral part of the novel, with Fraustino capturing their anger, disbelief, guilt, and, most of all, their inability to understand or cope with a nearly grown son who's totally lost his bearings. Religion is a critical story element, too, used intriguingly as a source both of hope and of horror (it's part of Ash's paranoia). Too frenetic, too disjointed, too distant, this lacks the emotional punch of Franklin's Eclipse , about a girl who watches her father sink into depression. But there's an earthiness and an unpretentiousness about the situation (the ending is totally realistic) and about what Wes and his family learn from it that command attention and force a rethinking of the notion that "it" only happens to the other guy. Stephanie Zvirin #hardcover#juvenilefiction#lisafraustino #novel#familystory

ISBN: 9780531087398