Youth In Revolt "Overview"

I am still reading The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne but I have added Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne to my plate.

I was looking for a more modern book and this book reminded me of the movies Juno and Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, which both have Michael Cera as main characters. This book just so happens to have been made into a movie with Michael Cera as the lead character and book cover. Ha.

Michael Cera is definitely the actor I'd imagine while reading Youth in Revolt. All of the characters that Michael Cera plays are similar to this main character, Nick Twisp. Nick Twisp is a 14 year old boy in high school who likes to write journals and is struggling with high school. Nick Twisp has a rough home life and above-average intelligence. His best friend is Leroy, a.k.a Lefty and he lives with his neurotic mother, Estelle, and mother's truck driver boyfriend, Jerry. During summertime, he lives with his alcoholic father, George, and his father's "latest bimbette. " His sister moved to L.A. with her boyfriend before the book's plot began.

This book is written in a series of journals from the viewpoint of Nick Twisp. This book is probably not school-appropriate because Nick is obsessed with sex. He also uses SAT-style vocabulary, which is strange for a 14 year old. I have inferred that this book takes place in the past because Nick likes to listen to Frank Sinatra on a record player and the computers are dinosaurs. Nick owns a IBM AT clone and his friend owns a Atari ST. Microsoft Word is not the word processing program he uses because this probably was not invented yet. Nick has also not mastered the computer very well. Most modern-day teenagers do not need to use the F3 key for help.

Overall, this book is interesting if you can ignore Nick's obsession. The author uses various words to cover-up the proper terms, which prevents some of the awkwardness. He also likes to write with many adjectives and use the same meaning in various ways to mix things up and keep it interesting. For example, (sorry it's the first one I found) the author used "fat [belly]"  previously and then writes "hairy, white flab" a few lines later. See? Same meaning but different words.