Paranoid Park (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Paranoid Park Cindy Welch Nelson, Blake Paranoid Park. Viking, 2006180p ISBN 0-670-06118-2$15.99 R Gr. 7-12 Visiting the edgy skate park Paranoid Park is an impulse that changes the nameless narrator's life, as does meeting homeless skateboarders and hopping a train with a skater named Scratch, who is headed for the next town on a unique kind of beer run. If a private security guard on the train hadn't seen them both and started brutally beating Scratch with his nightstick, the narrator would never have gone to Scratch's aid by knocking the guard to the ground. Unfortunately, he does, and the guard is then dragged under the train and sliced in two across the tracks. The narrator is able to get away and clean everything but his conscience; when a police officer shows up at his high school and starts asking questions, his guilt intensifies, and he believes it's only a matter of time until they come for him. Subplots about the narrator's parents divorcing, his losing his virginity to the wrong girl while falling for the right girl, and his interactions with skating friends from school are simply yet effectively written as a backdrop for the incident and its Poe-like echoes in his head and heart. An opening quote from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment foreshadows the psychological tenseness of this teen drama, and Nelson's style feeds that drama by tending toward the stark without being abrupt, effectively suggesting the unquiet mind of a boy working his way through a haze of regret, horror, and responsibility. Although the ending is a bit neat, teens will embrace the narrator's dilemma, his difficulties with family and friends, and the spare prose that moves the story along like the steady beating of a human pulse. Pair this with a retelling or adaptation of Crime and Punishment or Poe's "The Telltale Heart" for lively discussion. Copyright © 2006 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois