Notes From a Midnight Driver- Jordan Sonneblick

I think I’m going to have to shorten my reviews in order to post more, as I seem to read more books than I can keep up with. So here goes for a series of somewhat shorter posts, but books that I will happily recommend.

Notes From a Midnight Driver was quite a delightful surprise. It’s been sitting on my to-read shelf for some time, but the cover continued to put me off. But when I picked it up, the cover was soon forgotten. This was a lovely mix of humour with great story- telling. Alex is understandably upset with his parent’s recent divorce and the fact that he can’t get either one of them to remember he exists. So he has a fortifying drink from his dad’s liquor cabinet, takes his mom’s car with the intent of paying a visit to his dad, and ends up on a neighbour’s lawn, having decapitated a lawn gnome. His sentence ends up being an assignment to spend time with an eccentric and contrary old man in the local nursing home. With the support of his best friend, Laurie, he does so and is surprised at what he learns along the way. The humour is sometimes slap-stick, the changes in our main character most admirable, as he makes choices that enable him to come to terms with what life has dealt him. This is a nice contrast to some recent offerings, where characters tend to turn to something more malignant, such as cutting, to cope with life’s difficulties. It reminded me somewhat of one of my favourites a couple of years back, Skinnybones and the Wrinkle Queen by Glen Huser.

Both of these novels would be excellent additions to a young adult as well as a high school collection.