Poor, poor Percival, you have to feel bad for the kid. Suffering the worst fate the could befall a book character, being written into a young adult novel. Naturally he has to deal with bullying, the death of a parent, the death of a best friend, and all those weird social gatherings like prom and graduation, all in less than 150 pages. I pity him. Really, I do.

He's quite an interesting kid, however. Trying to follow in his late father's footsteps, who was an anthropologist who frequently came home with tales of primitive tribes of humans and their strange and exotic customs, and was published in National Geographic, Percival has begun writing a field notebook about the tribes found in his own high school. He hopes his essays will also be published, as he believes he has some significant findings about the lipstick tribe, the smoker tribe, the anthropithecus-like jock tribe, and so on.

It's obvious from the start that Percival is a teensy bit eccentric, but you quickly begin to realize he's well beyond that, and that he isn't dealing well with the death of his friend and father. What you have is a sort of unraveling, with all the "it's okay to be socially awkward and everything will be okay in the end" atmosphere you would expect from a young adult novel. There's a twist or two that add a nice dose of interestingness in the end, which is nicely balanced out by the relationship between the boy and his female friend being left frustratingly inconclusive. I'll pretend the book is a fantasy and they lived happily ever after. The bully did say kind words to his victim at one point, after all.

Altogether I found the book interesting, both unique and cliche, and I rather enjoyed the author's way with words. I naturally connected with the science-minded young man, which probably makes me bias, but I feel the book definitely deserves a better rathing than it has right now. 4 stars. ( )

a good book exploring parent abandonment ( )