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Punkzilla (2009)

by Adam Rapp(Favorite Author)

3.52 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0763630314 (ISBN13: 9780763630317)

languge

English

genre

Young Adult Fiction

publisher

Candlewick Press

review 1: While I can see the appeal for some teens (the grittier, more titilating aspects of the novel) I felt the stream of consciousness mixed with the form of letters and time jumping were too confusing for a majority of the book. I was looking forward to this novel and it just didn't appeal to me the way I had hoped. I will say that Rapp does create a very distinctive, real teenage voice for the most part which was enjoyable. Overall, not my favorite and the ending did not have the same emotional response I would have expected.
review 2: I was hoping this book would be so much better since it was written by the brother of the man who stared in Rent. But sadly, it was a bit disappointing, and a bit boring. It is the tale of a young boy who has run away from militar... morey school to see his gay brother who is dying of cancer. Punkzilla was a troubled young man who was sent to military school by his father, the Major, because he was not successful in school and had been spending time smoking weed. His brother, who was gay and became a writer of plays, moved away to live with his boyfriend in another state, and Punkzilla wanted to see him before he died. The story is all about the people he meets on the way to see his brother, and is told in the form of letters that he writes to his brother, P, and letters he receives from him, his mother, his father, and his other brother. We hear how Punkzilla was not successful n military school because he could not learn the maneuvers with his rifle, and he was not doing well in his classes. He had run away and lived in a boarding house with couple street kids, who were kind to him, but it was a life of little money and breaking the law. He leaves there on a rode trip to see his brother, and is beaten up by a gang and has his money stolen, primarily because he is effeminate and he looks like a girl. He also meets a precocious young boy who is kind to him and is brought to his home, but he steals his backpack and takes his phone. He also must give one of the men who picks him up a blow job, even though he indicates that the man was kind to him. Along the way we get Punkzilla's story, about how he could never live up to the Major's expectations, how he was in love with a girl that his younger brother, Edward, is now dating, and how he loved his older brother, P, and was devastated that the family shunned him for being gay. On his road trip, Punkzilla also meets a nice drifter who takes care of him for a while, treats him to dinner and a hotel room, introduces him to his ex-wife who takes him to an amusement park and treats him like her son, and to his daughter who is about the same age as Punkzilla. Punk and the girl have sex, it being his first time, and the next day the man leaves him, never to return. Punk then ends up with a car full of old people who eventually get him close to his brother. When he finally reaches his destination, his brother is already in a coma, and he must read the letters to him before he dies. His brother's lover agrees to take care of Punkzilla and not make him return home, and when the brother dies, he does not let the family know he is there attending the funeral, but instead hangs back in the shadows so he cannot be seen. He does not want to return to a life with this family who shunned the brother he loves, and instead wants to create a new life, maybe with a new name, and have the chance to start again. less

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