I Is Someone Else (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: I Is Someone Else Loretta Gaffney Cooper, Patrick I Is Someone Else. Delacorte, 2006 [304p] Library ed. ISBN 0-385-90286-7$18.99 Trade ed. ISBN 0-385-73269-4$16.95 Reviewed from galleys Ad Gr. 9-12 Fifteen-year-old Stephen doesn't have a clue about what happened to his older brother, Rob, who has been missing for months; whatever happened, Stephen can't believe (as his parents do) that Rob is dead. En route from his native England to a summer program in France in 1966, Stephen meets Jerry and Astrid, hippies who happen to know Rob, rumored to have been traveling to Istanbul. Convinced by Jerry and Astrid to accompany them in a van headed east, Stephen abandons his program, sends a letter to his parents, and begins a journey in every sense of the word. Along the way, he encounters sometimes exotic, sometimes terrifying foreign settings, experiments with drugs, falls in love, and is nearly stoned by a mob in Iran. Though Stephen is supposedly searching for his brother, it quickly becomes clear that he is searching for himself, and ultimately he must own up to the truth about a traumatic past sexual encounter with one of his former teachers. The episodic plot structure of this British import mirrors traditional quest narratives, but the journey itself is a pleasurably wild ride glazed in a feverish jumble of hashish, poetry, some genuinely frightening brushes with Turkish authorities, and graphic descriptions of dysentery. Orientalist clichés abound, though Stephen's dewy-eyed romance with the East is appropriate given his naïve and poetic sensibilities. However, Jerry's uncanny knack for rescuing Stephen at the last minute is a crude plot device, especially his final intervention; Stephen's near breakdown is too quickly averted, and his return to England to confront his teacher is disconcertingly abrupt. Nonetheless, readers with a taste for foreign adventure and a curiosity about the 1960s will enjoy Stephen's long, strange trip. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois