Book: Being Henry David
Author: Cal Armistead
Teen Reviewer: Shannon Finney
Rating: 2/5 Stars
Being
Henry David by Cal Armistead tells the story of a teenage boy who wakes up in
Penn station having no idea who he is. All he has with him is a copy of Walden by Henry David Thoreau. He
adopts the philosophy of the book and uses is to guide him on his journey to
rediscovering himself, and confronting the dark past behind him that he won’t
let himself remember.
The beginning of the novel is
promising, at least as far as the plot goes, as everything about the main
character is a mystery. However, the writing style immediately got old for me
when I discovered that the sentence fragments are not just a way to convey
the chaos and confusion going on in the protagonist’s mind as he awakes for the
first time, but the way that the entire book is written. With unimpressive
prose, the protagonist, who is dubbed “Hank” by a random street rat he meets in
a bathroom, sets out on his journey of bad decision making and highly
unrealistic, half-though-out scenarios.
The most annoying part of the book,
for me, is that new mysterious and secrets are constantly introduced whose
solutions are highly anticipated but rarely satisfactory. The entire plot
savors of anti-climax. The utter dullness of the conflicts is mostly due to the
setting where most of the story takes place: Concord, MA,
a snobby suburban tow where everyone Hank meets is instantly friendly and
accommodating despite knowing nothing about him. I find this an odd direction
for the author to take the plot, even though this is the town that Thoreau is
from. Here, although he has no
recollection of his former
life, Hank lives a basically normal life with a normal girlfriend and normal
problems, with the exception of the unrealistic amount of coincidental meetings
with former friends and foes, who always appear just at the right time.
On top of all this, the characterization
is weak. We learn nothing about our main character except that he has a healthy
interest in girls and athletic and musical skills. Likewise, each secondary
character is assigned a few traits that are assigned to some societal
stereotype. There is very little depth. The only glimmer if literary merit in
the novel is its lesson of transcendentalism that can be taught to the reader
who knows nothing about this movement in literature.
Overall, I found Being Henry David to be extremely light reading, with an unrealistic
plot and underdeveloped, shallow characterization. The novel leaves much to be
desired, like more interesting “pieces to the puzzle” of the many mysteries
that arise, and a more respectable and likable protagonist. If you’re into
books about high school, boyfriend/girlfriend drama and cutesy romance, then
you’d probably like this book.
