Matthew Quick - Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Readable, engrossing and touching

I thought this was a very good book. It is readable, engrossing and touching and also has some important things to say. Narrated by Leonard Peacock, a High School student in Philadelphia, it is the tale of one day of his life - his eighteenth birthday. On that day he decides that he will first shoot a schoolmate and then himself. (This is revealed on Page 2, so isn't that much of a spoiler.) We get Leonard's observations on life, what has brought him to this state and portraits of various people he knows, both the very good, the not so good and the "übermorons".

Leonard is (pretty obviously) an unhappy and rather disturbed character, but his narrative makes perfect sense in its own terms, and I found it genuinely touching and very believable. Much of the time he is just experiencing the sort of anxieties and disillusion which many of us have felt at some time, but considerably more intensely, which for me made the sympathy for him the more heartfelt as the events which have led up to all this are gradually revealed. His observations on the truly good people in his life are tender and sometimes moving, and he has some very shrewd things to say about the roles played by others, even those who are fairly incidental to the story. For example, of his school Guidance Counsellor, who expresses concern which Leonard meets with an emphatic speech about how he is fine, he says:
"Deep down she absolutely knows I'm bull[...]ing her, I'm sure of it. But she has a million problems to solve, hundreds of students who need her help, endless [expletive] parents to deal with, mountains of paperwork, meetings in that awful room with the round table and the window air-conditioning unit they run even in winter because the meeting room is directly over the tropically hot boiler room, and so she knows the easiest thing to do is believe me.
"She's fulfilled her obligation, assuaged her conscience by finding me in the hallway and giving me the chance to freak out, and I've played my role too, by remaining calm, pretending to be okay, and therefore giving her permission to cross me off her things-to-do list. Now she can move on, and I can too."

I think that's a very perceptive passage, just reeled off in passing, and there are a lot of others just as good. It gives a good idea of the style, too, which I found extremely involving and very readable.

The only question is whether you want to read another book about an angst-ridden and suicidal teenager. Personally, I think this one is well worth it; I became very engrossed and stayed up too late in order to finish it, and it has stayed with me strongly ever since. I think it's a really good book, and I recommend it very warmly.