Sunday, April 27, 2014

Special Post - Short Reviews #1

I've been reading so many books lately that I will never have time to write full reviews of all the gems I've come across. Also wanted to alert you to a few oldies that I've enjoyed in the past as well. So for your reading pleasure, here are ten short reviews for wonderful books you should definitely consider for your next reading selections. 

All have my big three requirements for a quality read: great story, involved interesting characters, and of course extremely good writing. Trust me that each will not disappoint you.



Happy reading.


Fred
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Death and the Penguin - Audrey Kurkov


First Sentences:
First, a stone landed a metre from Viktor's foot.
He glanced back. Two louts stood grinning, one of whom stopped, picked up another from a section of broken cobble, and bowled it at him skittler-fashion. Viktor made off at something approaching a racing walk and rounded the corner, telling himself the main thing was not to run. 







Description:


This is an offbeat, oddly humorous story, translated from the original Russian, about a man living in modern Kiev who is hired by a newspaper to write obituaries for living people. Not so unusual until his obits begin to appear in print as these people coincidentally turn up dead. Everything happening is masked in secrecy, with his newspaper Chief saying, "When you do know what's what, it will mean there no longer is any real point to your work or to your continuing existence."


Oh, and a few oddities: the obit writer owns a penguin a
dopted from a bankrupt zoo that lives in his apartment; a little girl is dropped off to live with him by her father who then disappears; someone is regularly entering Viktor's locked apartment at night, unseen, leaving gifts and notes including a pile of money and a gun; and much more highly unusual occurrences and people that keep the writer in a constant state of puzzlement.

Keeps you guessing to the very last sentence.



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Campus Sexpot: A Memoir  - David Carkeet


First Sentences:
"Linda Franklin had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college of Wattsville, but at nineteen she had known physical intimacy with a high percentage of those boys who knew enough to appreciate her amply endowed body."

As first sentences go, it is not a bad one. It treats Linda Franklin's promiscuity like a familiar subject, it shows a touch of wit in its sober contradiction of a preposterous assertion ("had not been to bed with every boy in the junior college,") and its categorical precision ("a high percentage of those boys who ...") tells us we are in the hands of an author with a working mind.



Description:

Author David Carkeet, while reading sleazy novel, realizes that his small town and its citizens were the basis for this sexy book which was written by a former English teacher who skipped town. Carkeet recalls his own coming-of-age story and compares it to the narration of the activities of the people in his town. Very funny.


[Side note: I accidentally left my copy of this book behind at a conference where I spoke, so had to go through the unusual experience of contacting organizers and facilitators to ask whether they had seen my Campus Sexpot book laying around. Took more than a few calls, each a bit more embarrassing than the last. Probably lost a bit of my image (or fortified it) among my colleagues.]


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Doc: A Novel  - Mary Doria Russell


First Sentences:
He began to die when he was twenty-one, but tuberculosis is slow and sly and subtle. 
The disease took fifteen years to hollow out his lungs so completely they could no longer keep him alive, In all that time he was allowed a single season of something like happiness. 




Description:


Dr. John Henry (Doc) Holiday, a Southern aristocrat, moves to Texas for his health and opens one of the first dentistry offices in Dodge City. After becoming a gambler to survive when business was bad (always), he befriends Wyatt Earp in this rich, compelling historical fiction of the people and environment of the Old West. 


Highly recommended in every way.


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Down the Great Unknown:John Wesley Powell's 1869 Journey of Discovery and Tragedy Through the Grand Canyon - Edward Dolnick

First Sentences:
The first inhabitants of Green River Station, Wyoming Territory, gather at the riverfront to cheer off a rowdy bunch of adventurers...
Their plan could hardly be simpler. They will follow the Green River downstream until it merges with the Grand to become the Colorado, and then they will stay with the Colorado wherever it takes them





Description:


Here is a real life adventure. Ten men, including their one-armed leader, in 1869 set out 
in wooden boats to follow the Green River to the Colorado River through the entire Grand Canyon. Uncharted and unseen water faces them, with rapids, cold, and starvation a daily trial. Hold-your-breath fascinating and gripping on every page. 

One of the best adventure books I have ever read.


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Inscribed in the plaster and finished in gold leaf, those five famous words appeared over the proscenium at the World Green Empire in north London, in the smooth white halo that formed the focal point of the theater, and surrounded the blood red, gold-tassled curtain.



Description:

Here is probably one of the most fascinating (and true) accounts of the world of magic, revealing the life of William Robinson, an ordinary magician in the early 1900s who tries to find a gimmick to make his performance stand out. He hits on the idea of pretending to be a silent Chinese conjurer, Chung Ling Soo. In his foreign make-up and Asian robes, he works astonishing magic he has designed himself to audiences fascinated by his mysterious nature as much as his tricks, including catching bullets fired from a gun. 


The book shows the inner working of his illusions, his constant dedication to his craft, and the imagination and technical skill behind each performance. It is a great book that provides a peak at the world of magic, illusion, and performance.


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First Sentences:
The Essex was not going to founder immediately. That soon became clear to the men of the three whaleboats. 







Description:

Did the Great White Whale of Herman Melville's Moby Dick actually exist? Author Severin travels the world to record fascinating stories and eye-witness accounts of white whales and their behavior in today's world and in past history, leading credence to the idea that Moby Dick actually existed and was just as ornery as Melville portrayed him. 

I really loved this book, the riveting accounts from eye-witnesses, and the travel to exotic locations around the world that have reported sightings of a white whale. 

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Mammoth - John Varley

First Sentences:
The helicopter flew low over the landscape as barren as any to be found on planet Earth.
This was Nunavut. It wasn't a province and hardly a territory though they called it that. As far a Warburton was concerned they could give it all back to the Eskimos. 




Description:

When examining a rare find of a Mammoth elephant in the ice fields of Canada, a carefully-preserved man in animal skins is found next to the animal's body. An astonishingly historic find. But there is something else. Strapped to the ancient man's wrist is a gleaming stainless steel briefcase, not exactly something a cave man would have in prehistoric times. 

A lovely, clever page-turner of a novel.


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Mortality  - Christopher Hitchens

First Sentences:
I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death 
But nothing prepared me for the early morning in June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement.



Description:

Christopher Hitchens is a remarkably clever, intellectual, and funny writer. In Mortality, he details his battle with esophageal cancer and his entrance into the "land of malady." While a depressing topic, Hitchens retains his caustic wit and piercing observations, beautifully writing about his own sickness, fears, treatment, friends, and life facing this disease.

As a cancer combatant, this book resonates with me as few other do on this topic. 


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First Sentences: 
Stuck to the cracked dashboard was a decal of the Dutch soccer team PVS Eindhoven.

A PVS Eindhoven fan in Ouagadougou? I tapped on the team's red and white logo and asked the driver if he was an admirer of Dutch soccer. He had no idea what I was talking about. He'd never heard of PVS, didn't give a damn about soccer. He didn't even know where the Netherlands was.




Description:

The delightful, witty true adventures of the author who hits on a scheme to sell a very old Mercedes automobile to people in a Third World country where these cars are very popular. The only catch is that to make any profit at all, he has to drive the wreck himself to the destination; that is, from his home in The Netherlands to Africa, including a section across the Sahara desert. 


Desert, people, travel, and culture come into contact in adventurous and humorous situations, revealing aspects of each at their best (and worst). 



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First Sentences:
Rebecca Love met Tommy Odom ten years ago at a Renaissance fair. 
She had her booth selling clay sculptures of women's bodies; he ran the fool's maze.






Description:

Different cultures and people choose a wide variety of ways to deal with the bodies of loved ones claimed by death. The author 
explores these many methods with quiet fascination and respect, no matter how unusual the practices are. She talks with the people who offer these services and learns that bodies can be: 1) cremated and dropped from a crop-dusting plane; 2) mixed with cement that is shaped into a sculpture and tossed into the ocean as a habitat for fish; 3) buried in a natural cemetery without coffin or embalming; 4) turned into diamonds using the carbon found in their ashes. Of course, there are examples of even more wildly-interesting after-death options that she explores.  

Fascinating, thought-provoking, and most of all, strangely fun. 

Sunday, April 20, 2014

Mother of God

Rosolie, Paul. Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon. New York: HarperCollins. 2014. Print


First Sentences:
Before he died, Santiago Durand told me a secret.
It was late at night in a palm-thatched hut on the bank of the Tambopata River, deep in the southwestern corner of the Amazon Basin. Beside a mud oven, two wild boar heads sizzled in a cradle of embers, their protruding tusks curling in static agony as they cooked. The smell of burning cecropia wood and singed flesh filled the air.







Description:

You just cannot get a better opening than reading a dying man's secret as told in a mud hut on the bank of an Amazon river with wild boar heads sizzling on coals nearby. Paul Rosolie's Mother of God: An Extraordinary Journey into the Uncharted Tributaries of the Western Amazon immediately checks all my boxes for a good read: interesting setting, Check; unusual characters, Check; potential for great plot, Check; intriguing use of words, Check. After just these first sentences, I'm all in. 

Mother of God are the true experiences of the author, Paul Rosolie, and his life in the wildest areas of the Peruvian Amazon jungle. When his dyslexia and disinterest in school cause him to struggle with academics, he obtains his GED, drops out of high school, and works as a life guard to save money to travel to the Amazon, a word that has caught his attention. He has always had an interest in nature, hiking, and rescuing injured animals, and later develops a fascination with isolated environments and real possibility they might disappear before he had a chance to experience them. 

Through writing letters to anyone working in a jungle environment, he eventually obtains a volunteer research position on a 27,000 acre preserve in the Peruvian portion of the Amazon jungle, an area known as the Madre de Dios ("Mother of God"). Emma, a British biologist, and JJ, an indigenous guide and her partner, have scraped together enough funds to purchase this land and ecotourism lodge to create the Las Piedras Biodiversity Station. 

Surrounded by hundreds of miles of untouched jungle, the LPBS is heaven for the inquisitive Rosolie, and his real education begins to take place every day under the tutelage of JJ . They daily walk the trails throughout the preserve and observe the diversity of the jungle, identifying and observing tracks, medicinal plants, and the animals themselves. 
[from a plane] it was like looking into the vault of the universe to where all the greatest secrets were kept, the library of life....the foliage of the Andes/Amazon interface ... constitutes more than 15 percent of the global variety of plants....rough tallies for the entire Andes/Amazon region: 1,666 birds, 414 mammals, 479 reptiles, 834 amphibians, and a large portion of the Amazon's 9,000 fish species.

One of these creatures is Lulu, an orphan baby giant anteater that Rosolie rescues and raises at the lodge. What is a baby giant anteater like? Imagine "if you bred a hyper baby black bear with Edward Scissorhands"...with "three-inch-long black sickles that could tear through denim and skin with ease." And there's that two-foot-long sticky tongue. Undaunted by Lulu's huge claws and her need ride on his back and sleep on his chest in his hammock, Rosolie patiently learns to hand feed her until he can teach her (somehow) to identify ant hills and how to use her claws and long tongue to feed herself.

And, oh, the adventures he has each day, including:
  • a cayman (crocodile) that swallowed a 4' bag of Brazil nuts, cooking pot, and fish in one gulp;
  • footprints from tapirs and jaguars found many mornings only inches from tents. (JJ feels it is "probably the smell of fresh white gringo that was attracting them.")
  • spider monkeys that taunt and throw figs at the fiercest animal, the peccaries (wild pigs);
  • awakening one night in his hammock to the hot breath of a jaguar only inches from his face;
  • gliding ants that can sail back to tree trunk when wind blows them off.
  • a 15' anaconda (snake) (Rosolie'e encounter is scoffed at by Santiago who tells of an area that has anacondas are over 40' long 24" wide - and Rosolie later actually finds one!)
Not all his experiences are with the animals, nor are they all pleasant. He notices the impact of each action on the jungle has repercussions, some temporary and some permanent. The jungle is a living organism that suffers from any modification in its system of life. 

He encounters poachers who kill a wide variety of wildlife with disastrous impact on the jungle. Rare trees with unique holes are chopped down to secure a nest of endangered baby birds, thus destroying not only the birds but a very rare nesting spot for similar birds. Rubber plantation owners exploit and destroy both the trees and the natives. Loggers clear-cut mahogany trees that take years, if ever, to regrow. Government road-builders blast huge swatches of the jungle to cut a highway across from Brazil to Peru to provide access to the resources and animals, as well as the opening of areas for human settlement. Small tribes of "uncontacted" natives move deeper and deeper into the jungles and became fiercely suspicious of outsiders and deadly protective against intruders. 

But Mother of God is a work of hope and survival. There is so much fascinating information presented as the author explores trails, animals, and survival knowledge from the indigenous people he encounters. Page after page of beauty, wonder, and adventure fill this book and pull readers onward, deeper into the world of the Amazon.

And, of course, Rosolie must seek the lost world described by Santiago, the old native who tells stories of the giant anacondas and many other wonders, and who is never proved wrong in his knowledge.  Access is treacherous, but Rosolie sets off alone to find it using Santiago's ancient directions.
He said it was a place where humans had never been. Between rivers and isolated by a quirk of geography, it had remained forgotten through the centuries. The only tribes who knew of the land had regarded it as sacred and never entered, and so it had remained untouched for millennia...He told me that it was the wildest place left on earth.
Mother of God is a book of exploration, whether learning about tracks or seeking means to keep the Amazonian jungle and its inhabitants protected. So much beauty is described and experienced by the author, an adventurer and seeker of knowledge and understanding about this wild land. As he writes on the departure of his solo journey to find the lost world:
In the most savage and dizzyingly vast wilderness on earth, the rule is simple: never go out alone. Yet there are those among us who have difficulty accepting what we have not found out for ourselves, who pass a WET PAINT sign and cannot help touching the wall. We simply have to know

Happy reading. 



Fred

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:



Detailed adventures of British explorer Percy Fawcett in the early 1900's and his many forays into the Amazon jungle in search of the City of Gold. (Previously reviewed here). 


Adams, Mark. Turn Right at Machu Piccu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time  
The desk-bound author sets out with a modern-day Fawcett as his guide to walk the routes of Hiram Bingham in order to re-trace that explorer's search for the fabled city of gold in Peru, with very humorous and serious adventures along the way. (Previously reviewed here). 

Davis, Wade. One River.  

Memoirs of the author who traveled the length of South America via the jungle, meeting and interacting with isolated tribes, describing their friendships, rituals, food, hunting practices, languages, and social structure.



Fascinating memoir of the author and his family who lived on their game reserve and ran a safari company for four generations in the wilds of South Africa. The book opens with the author awakening, at age 11, to a deadly 9' mamba sliding over him - one bite is fatal. And it goes on for there with encounters with all forms of wildlife on the reserve.


Sunday, April 13, 2014

Schroder: A Novel

Gaige, Amity. Schroder: A Novel. New York: Twelve. 2013. Print


First Sentences:
What follows is a record of where Meadow and I have been since our disappearance.
My lawyer says I should tell the whole story. Where we went, what we did, who we met, etc. As you know, Laura, I'm not a reticent person. I'm talkative -- you could even say chatty -- for a man. But I haven't spoken a word for days. It's a vow I've taken. My mouth tastes old and damp, like a cave.




Description:

Amity Gaige's Schroder: A Novel is a rare book: compelling and unsettling, loving and surprising all at the same time. It is the story of one father's overwhelming love for his daughter, his confusion about the break-up of his marriage, and his uncertainty about his own life and identity.

Beautifully and passionately written, Schroder is the journal written by Eric Kennedy from his jail cell detailing the reasons for his spontaneous abduction of his daughter and their activities during those weeks. While seemingly a horrifying premise, Eric tells his story calmly and rationally, adding bits of his own history. He reflects on his childhood flight from East Germany with his father to the United States, his fabrication of a new last name and life history to get into a boys' camp, and his love for his wife, Laura, and their six-year-old daughter Meadow. 

But Eric also records his insecurities with his own parenthood, with relationships, and his private research project that seems to have neither purpose nor end. And he writes of Laura's frustration and ongoing conflict with him about his parenting shortcomings and their eventual separation, divorce and limited visitation arrangements. Without his daughter and his wife, his life starts to go downhill. 
There was the underlying problem of days. Between every allotted weekend visitation sprawled the weeks themselves. Worm-eaten, heartsick, exaggerated days bookended by conciliatory Saturdays and Sundays in her presence. Then, every other weekend without her. Grief made those weekends drag. 
During one visit with Meadow, he suddenly decides they need a road trip and off they go, with no real plan or explanation given to his ex-wife and Meadow's mother, Laura. The journey seems slightly irregular even to Eric, but he relishes the opportunity to spend time with his daughter. Meadow is excited at first, then a bit puzzled about the whole experience. But she loves her father and together they move from location to location, quietly under the radar, searching for ... what?

Soon, however, their trip grows into something else: an reckless, endless flight away from his former life. Turning back and delivering Meadow to her mother is inevitable Eric knows, but as the days and miles pile up, return becomes not a simple solution. Such an action will be full with repercussions and probably signaling the end to his life with Meadow.
I realized that my situation was irreparable. I was like dead man, appealing my death. It made me too sad, to realize how late and how insufficient such an appeal would be.
Over the days his relationship with Meadow changes, both for better and worse. He has sole responsibility for the safety, care, and feeding of a six-year-old, and his rises to that occasion as often as he acts completely irresponsibility towards her. He becomes more and more conflicted.
I had forgotten about the vortex that gets created when you love a kid. Because I wanted to be with my daughter more than anything, and yet I also wanted to be free of that desire. I wanted to be free of that desire because I knew being with her had an end.
He sometimes ponders about what ex-wife Laura is doing, considers her fears for her daughter, and her probable confusion as to Eric's intentions. He is sure she is angry and does not understand her actions that caused this situation. Although he still loves Laura and secretly hopes for a reconciliation and more happy years together in the future, in his more calm moments knows it will never be. 

But he cannot give up on the road trip with Meadow, his final chance to be with her on an extended basis, no matter the cost 
I knew it was cruel not to call you, to tell you that Meadow was all right, that is wasn't as bad as you were thinking. But I was used to your absence, and we were both used to cruelty by then, I mean the casual cruelty of people dismantling their life together.
Eric is never violent or even mean to Meadow, showing her only loving devotion as her father. She occasionally questions their adventure and the new people and places they encounter, but her father is there, she has plenty of junk food to eat and no school, so life seems pretty good to her.

This is a strongly written story about an intelligent, troubled, and wounded man who seizes on an opportunity and rides it to whatever conclusion comes, right or wrong. His desire to spend time with his daughter consumes him. As he writes this detailed journal which "could someday help him in court," we readers slowly enter his mind and life, seeing their influences that lead to this adventure. 

His sadness, passion, insecurity, intelligence, and dedication to having a life with Meadow drive him constantly. It is absolutely riveting to follow his story and his wild attempts to find and then preserve love and relationships:
Because in the end, the great warring forces of our existence are not life versus death...but rather love versus time. In the majority, love does not survive time's passage. But sometimes it does. It must, sometimes.

Happy reading. 



Fred

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Flynn, Gillian. Gone Girl

The deterioration of a marriage to the point where the husband is accused of killing his wife who has disappeared. But is that the whole story? (previously reviewed here)

Sunday, April 6, 2014

The World's Strongest Librarian

Hanagarne, Josh. The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family. Gotham Books: New York. 2013. Print


First Sentences:
I don't like to see children cry, but I couldn't feel much sympathy for the little guy.

I told his mom there was no need to apologize as he sniffled and wept and wiped his nose on his Pokemon T-shirt. The problem? Our library system's Expanded Card let a patron borrow a hundred items. But this boy's mother was playing the Evil Queen and would only let him take fifty.










Description:

Librarians come in all shapes, sizes, and intelligence. Their stories are as fascinating as the information resources they oversee. Witness the life of Josh Hanagarne, the 6'7" librarian at the Salt Lake City Public Library and his daily struggles with library users as well as his own Tourette's Syndrome as recounted in his wry, open, and humorous autobiography, The World's Strongest Librarian: A Memoir of Tourette's, Faith, Strength, and the Power of Family.

Hanagarne is an immediately likable person. Each chapter opens with him dealing with some situation or another in his real life library setting. From a transgender patron arguing to be addressed as a female, to overly amorous couples in the book stacks, to rambunctious children and uninvited dogs at story time, to the user who argued that "Religion" books should not be on the "Nonfiction" shelves, to city council meetings with members who have never visited the library, Josh sees them all and deals with them quietly and thoughtfully.

For me as a former librarian, these funny, sad, and exasperating looks into the world of libraries and their users already satisfy my criteria for a quality read.


But Hanagarne has other stories to tell, particularly dealing with his own early life and the diagnosis of his Tourette's Syndrome. Previously, he is regarded as an ordinary child with a few admitted quirks in his behavior. Even after the diagnosis, his family continues to give him abounding love and strive to help him deal with his tics while they all try to understand this syndrome.  


Hanagarne recalls his school days in a small town of Elko, Nevada, his Mormon background, and subsequent "grand search for a partner" starting at age sixteen when he was first allowed to date (an activity he enters into with gusto). He provides an insider view of his training at the Missionary Training Center in preparation for his two-year Mormon mission, the details of which are fascinating, weird, and revealing about the young candidates and the Mormon religion. His Mormon mission experience proves challenging as he tries to preach in a foreign language while struggling with his vocal and physical tics. When he returns from his mission, he 
lives at home with his parents, enters college, and resumes looking for a partner and his life calling.

All his experiences are made more difficult if not impossible by his increasing Tourette's symptoms. Like a growing sneeze, he can feel the tics building and struggles to suppress them, but they usually overpower his efforts and return again and again. His efforts exhaust his body and mind, 
hamper his attendance at jobs and school, and discourage romances.

He tries many, many pathways to control these tics, including biting on a small rubber hose, chiropractic adjustments, vitamins, and even botulism toxin injections into his vocal cords to take away his voice for a few weeks so he can sit more quietly in his classrooms.


What eventually gives him peace is weightlifting. During workout periods, he is tic-free and happy. An eccentric, ex-military mentor helps Hanagarne focus himself in the discipline of extreme lifting, and his battle with Tourette's is seemingly conquered...or at least temporarily controlled.


Throughout it all, Hanagarne is a reader, a lover of books who devours everything, including Stephen King and other titles frowned on by his mother and the Mormon faithful. 
Books provide an escape, an education, and a world he often cannot realize in his actual life. And books eventually lead him to a volunteer and later a paid job in the local library where he also finds peace.  

The World's Strongest Librarian is the 
story of an admirable man's struggle, embarrassment, pain, religion, and unrequited love. But it is also a tale of curiosity, questioning, perseverance, humor, and eventually love. He is an unusual hero in a world of ordinary people, facing and dealing with life as it comes to him, albeit with the wild card of Tourette's  affecting everything he does. 

Josh Hanagarne is a great storyteller, someone willing to reveal insider secrets to his readers about Mormonism, teen lust, self-discipline, illness, training, and family strength. One cannot help but feel his frustrations, yet constantly laugh at his anecdotes and root for his small and large efforts to triumph and achieve his goals.


A strong book, filled with humor, insight, and real life. Very highly recommended.



Happy reading. 



Fred

If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Grandin, Temple. Thinking in Pictures: My Life with Autism

Recollections and insight into Temple Grandin about what exactly it feels like to have autism, what fears it brings, and techniques she used to deal with it to become an internationally respected animal scientist.

Lethem, Jonathan. Motherless Brooklyn
Unusual, sometimes bizarre twist on the classic detective novel as the main character who tries to solve a murder case is an outcast with Tourette's Syndrome.