Orbiting Jupiter

I went through this book in two long sessions. It’s written in a spare, stripped-down style – shades of S E Hinton and Louis Sachar - that’s both very easy to read and remarkably vivid. You can feel the cold of the snow and the warmth of a cow shed in Maine in mid-winter. You can smell the muggy damp of a crowded school bus and the reek of alcohol on the clothes of an intruder at the climax.

I also love the way the story unfolds, spooning out information in little chunks, so that we learn at the same rate as our 11-year-old narrator about the mysterious foster brother who arrives one day at his house. And at first, just like our narrator, we don’t like this new arrival. He’s surly, silent and refuses to laugh or smile. He also has a violent past, and in the early pages of the book all we’re waiting for is for him to do something bad and get sent right back to the juvenile correctional facility he’s just been released from.

But he doesn’t. Instead, we get to like him and to admire his stubborn, single-minded determination to do the one thing he’s always wanted to do, even it means he’s going to freeze to death in the process. We get to like him so much that by the time the book reaches its climax we’re not only totally on his side but we understand exactly why he does what he does. And it’s heartbreaking.

I'd never heard of the author, Gary Schmidt, before. Now I have, I'm inclined to buy everything he's ever written. Yes, I really do think Orbiting Jupiter is that good.