cover image The Patterns of Paper Monsters

The Patterns of Paper Monsters

Emma Rathbone, Little, Brown/Reagan Arthur, $13.99 paper (224p) ISBN 978-0-316-07750-7

A contemporary Holden Caulfield does time in a juvy center in Rathbone's singular debut. Seventeen-year-old Jacob Higgins is three months into his sentence for armed robbery, passing time at a northern Virginia juvenile detention center. Fueled by sarcasm and possible sociopathic tendencies, he endures "Olympic trials of boredom and grudging acquiescence," receives visits from his alcoholic mother, develops a budding romance with a girl he occasionally runs into, and wonders about the diabolical plans of a mysterious boy from an upper-class neighborhood. Rathbone's extraordinary and imaginative command of language surprises at every turn, from a woman described as "a pile of a person who smells like someone's weird house" to an air vent blowing "glacial wind swept up from prehistoric ice dunes." Though laxly plotted and a bit disappointing at the end, the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest meets Napoleon Dynamite sensibility is reason enough to stick with this story of one messed-up kid's ambivalent mosey toward getting it together. (Aug.)