Every so often you come across a book you feel you have to tell people about. King Dork arrived in a parcel sent by the author, Frank Portman. I wasn't really aware of his blog then (though I've had a look at it now) and I hadn't seen any of the internet reviews nor the discussions about its merits that I've now read. I came to it in the best possible way: with no preconceptions whatever and no previous knowledge.
I read a lot of books. Some of them are sent to me to review; some I choose myself; some are candidates for the Costa Book Awards for which I'm a judge this year in the children's books category. In spite of all the volumes filling my shelves and now some of my drawers too, I chose to take King Dork on a long train journey yesterday, and it's one of the most enjoyable, funny, sad, unexpected and thoroughly terrific books I've read for ages.
It's got to do with the narrative voice. The story, about a boy whose dad has died and who has other troubles (at school, with girls, with boys, with his mother's partner), is not a particularly new one. The trouble with such books often is: it's possible to get fed up with listening to young people moaning and not doing very much of anything else. Tom Henderson, the narrator, aka Chi-Mo, aka King Dork is not like that. He has an inner life. He's in a band... well, he's sort of in a band. The constantly-being-changed names both of the outfit and of the personnel (though the only other band member is Tom's single solitary friend, Sam Hellerman) are scattered all the way through the novel and you wait for the next one to appear with great anticipation. You're never disappointed. It's like coming across the chocolate bits in a pain-au-chocolat.
This book is about so many things, I don't quite know how to begin listing them. Tom is finding out about how his father died. He's doing his utmost to get it together with the mysterious 'Fiona'. He's trying to avoid the jocks and bullies at school without much success. He's putting together the band. He's seeing a psychiatrist. He's avoiding being beaten up and humiliated a hundred different ways by his schoolmates. He's learning to love Little Big Tom, his mother's partner, who is one of the best-drawn characters of all... there's no shortage here of incident and conflict.
There are shocks in the dénouement. For a while it all gets darker than you think it's going to - and I promise, no one who reads this will be bored. You might not like Tom as much as I did, but then I fell head over heels in love with him. Almost everything he thinks makes me laugh out loud, even the truly sad things, which of course make me cry as well. His insights into books of all kinds were completely brilliant and I agree with him about the wonderful Brighton Rock. It's a pleasure to make his acquaintance, and life seen through his eyes is constantly interesting and terrifying. What's more, the details of high school life he parades before us are so outrageously funny that you have a feeling they're no more nor less than the unvarnished truth.
Disaffected, alienated youth. American high school. First person narrative. This is Holden Caulfield territory, and the Catcher in the Rye theme that runs through the novel is one of the best things about it. It's part both of the fun and of the complexity, that Tom really has it in for a book that has a lot in common with... well, you get the picture. It's a running gag and a good one. The way it's taught to Tom's class is this: he has to read the first chapter, pick out the three-syllable words and use each of them in a sentence. You what? It's hard to believe but somehow Portman makes it convincing. The teachers in this book are a bonus. Every one of them comes straight off the page with maximum impact. I like the wonderfully-named Madame Jimenez-Macanally, the French teacher who helps Tom to decipher a section of the coded message left behind by his dead father. It's worth quoting part of a French conversation our hero has during one lesson, which he tells us about in English to hilarious effect. He's talking to Yasmynne Schmick (yes!):
"I am sorry," said Yasmynne Shmick. "I am hungry. The young girls wear a very pretty dress. They eat and play soccer with the mother and the fathers. My name is Yasmynne. I am four years old."And so on."Ah, yes," I said. "The young people love to buy discs of pop music for dancing and for holiday-making." I chose my words very carefully. "They... they... My God, they drink beverages. It is true. My two friends Jean and Claude go to the cinema yesterday to view films. What a surprise. They eat. They are flowers."
Open the book at almost any page and you'll find a passage you want to read out aloud to someone. People on my train must have been wondering what I was chortling about. I'll give one more example, which is a bit of lit-crit, King Dork-style. Tom is talking about Aldous Huxley's The Doors of Perception. I haven't read this book, but my bet is that our hero is right on the button:
The Doors of Perception guy is a Little Big Tom type, only much less loveable. You get lost in one of his convoluted sentences and you may never find your way back again: just light a signal fire with a couple of otherwise unattested adverbs and hope the rescue squad notices you and sends a helicopter to fly you out. The book is short but it took what seemed like several lifetimes to be over...The time spent reading King Dork, on the other hand, just flies by and you're sorry when the freewheeling Tom stops talking to you. This book is almost bound to be made into a movie, but however good that turns out to be, much will certainly be lost. You do have to read the words... read every single one in this outstanding book before Steven Spielberg and Anthony Minghella start phoning Frank Portman. (Adèle Geras)