Jack Gantos is a one of a kind writer with such a distinctive storytelling voice that I feel like I could identify something that he has written without ever looking at the cover. I'm a big fan of the Joey Pigza books because I feel like they capture the inner world of a kiddo struggling with ADHD, a boy who sometimes does things without knowing why he does them and is as surprised as everyone else around him when he acts out. Above all, he wants to be good; he tries to be good; he fails to be good in some hilarious and heartbreaking ways.
The central character in Dead End in Norvelt, a boy named Jack Gantos (a particularly fun trick played on the reader by the author, Jack Gantos: blurring the lines between fiction and personal narrative) shares Joey Pigza's desire to be good as well as his inability to measure up to that standard. This is the story of a summer when Jack is grounded for doing something that wasn't even his fault, and he becomes friends with his extremely eccentric, elderly neighbor -- a woman who knows a whole lot about the town's history and its residents and who puts that knowledge to use by writing the obituaries of the town's original inhabitants as they pass away.
This book is a remarkable, funny, and odd mix of mystery, history, comedy, and Hells Angels. I gobbled it up!
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