Another YA book recommendation.

[katster]

Remember the confession about YA fic last week? I've got another couple of recommendations.

I first found Pete Hautman's books browsing the shelves of the YA section in my local library. To be more specific, I found Godless, and between the title and the picture of a water tower on the cover, I was curious. Reading the synopsis on the book cover fascinated me even more, and so I took it home to read. It was neat. It's about an atheist teenager who makes up a faith about the town water tower to prove a point, only to have the whole thing explode in his face. It's a neat story, and at its heart, it's about people and their quirks. Highly recommended.

In fact, it was on the strength of that book that I picked up Invisible. Another tale of a teenager who very obviously has problems from the get-go. He's quiet, a bit standoffish, and his only real hobbies are his model railroad trains, building a bridge that resembles the Golden Gate out of matchsticks, and spying on the girl he really likes from an oak tree outside her bedroom window. The only person who seems to understand him is his best friend. It's hard to explain why it's so good without spoiling the book, but there's a moment in which you re-evaluate everything you've read up to that point. Just like the other book, it's about teenagers doing stupid things without thinking ahead to the consequences. While this is typical teenage behavior, and part of what makes the books ring so true, it's an examination of those consequences that make these books as fascinating as they are.

Anyway. The author is Pete Hautman, the titles are Godless and Invisible. And now I'm going to have to poke at his other books on the library shelves.