Ages
back, I did a Top Five post on my favorite childhood rereads, and this youth
novel made the list. I picked it up as a
kid all but sight unseen and wound up absolutely loving it. I’ve revisited it multiple times over the
years. My latest reading of the book was
the first since I started blogging about stuff I like, so it was only natural
that it’d end up here.
12-year-old
Paul Fisher is used to living in the shadow of his older brother and the Erik
Fisher Football Dream. Erik’s
achievements have always mattered more than Paul’s, and now that his family has
moved from Texas to Tangerine, Florida, he expects more of the same. But even though Paul is legally blind due to
an early childhood incident he can’t remember, he sees what his parents
can’t: he sees the real Erik, who fools everyone with his smiling all-American act but
gets off on cruelty and manipulation in his free time. While the rest of his family settles into
their new development, where the football uniforms are crisp and neat and the
houses are perfectly symmetrical, Paul winds up gravitating more to the real
Tangerine outside the development, the rural town populated by citrus
growers. There, he chases his own dreams
of glory on the soccer field and works on gaining the fortitude needed to hold
his own against Erik.
That was
a lengthy summary, but it still feels lacking in terms of explaining what this
book is really like. There’s so much
going on here. I love the
characterization of both Tangerine and Lake Windsor Downs (the housing
development,) both Paul’s gradual recognition of the class disparities between
the two and the ongoing theme of the way nature “fights back” against the
development itself, ie, numerous houses having termite problems because groves
were mowed down and chipped to build up the land, or lightning repeatedly
striking the house where the tallest trees used to stand. Everyone in Paul’s family is also really well
done. There’s Erik, whose psychopathy is
portrayed in a really chilling way, as well as Paul’s dad, who’s been consumed
by his dreams of Erik’s football stardom, and Paul’s mom, who’s just trying to
hold everything together in a new town that seems to be actively resisting
human habitation.
But for
me, things really get cooking when Paul starts getting more involved with
Tangerine than Lake Windsor Downs. I
like the theme of Paul not fitting in there and yet still feeling so much more
at home among the Tangerine kids than he’s ever been. I love the soccer stuff, the games that play
out more like war and Paul’s vividly-written teammates (Victor is my favorite,
for obvious reasons.) I also like Paul’s
introduction to the world of tangerine growers; it’s cool, because it’s so much
about class and race, but it’s handled in a pretty understated way, with Paul’s
realizations rising slowly like a tide instead of washing over him.
One
thing, though: this is the first time
I’ve read the book since becoming an interpreter in a public school, and the
IEP stuff is ridiculous. Paul’s mom mentions to the principal a few
days before school starts that Paul is legally blind, the guidance counselor
asks her to “fill out an IEP,” and less than a week later, Paul starts school
with all sorts of accommodations he doesn’t want? Ridiculous.
Warnings
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