This is the Part Where You Laugh

Starred review from February 29, 2016
In this tragicomic YA debut from adult author Hoffmeister (Let Them Be Eaten by Bears), a young man contends with anger, family troubles, and romance over a few increasingly chaotic months. Travis’s summer goals are simple: improve his basketball skills, stay out of trouble, and try to cheer up his grandmother, who’s dying from cancer. He also hangs out with his best friend Creature, spends time with a mercurial girl named Natalie, and searches for his drug-addicted mother in the homeless camps around the area. But the harder Travis tries, the more things spiral out of control, and when Creature runs afoul of a vindictive gang member, it puts everything into a new perspective. Hoffmeister’s coming-of-age story is both profane and profound—as Travis eloquently puts it early on, “Fuck being here in this trailer park and waiting to die. Fuck cancer.” Excerpts from Creature’s work in progress, a combination history/erotic romance entitled The Pervert’s Guide to Russian Princesses, give the story a surreal yet poignant edge. The result is a raw, offbeat novel with an abundance of honesty and heart. Ages 14–up. Agent: Adriann Ranta, Foundry Literary + Media. (May)■

Starred review from February 1, 2016
It's one tough summer in Eugene, Oregon, for Travis and his friends, "good kids with rough lives," as Travis' basketball coach calls them. Travis' friend Natalie says, "This is the part where you laugh. You just have to. When things are so shitty that there's nothing you can do, there's no other way to react." And the problems do pile up. Travis lives in a trailer park with his grandparents, and his grandmother is dying of cancer; his mother is a homeless heroin addict. Natalie has reason not to trust her new stepfather. Travis breaks his ribs jumping off a bridge, and his friend Malik is stabbed during a pickup basketball game. Yet the story never feels heavy or melodramatic. What might seem didactic in lesser hands feels realistic and right here. Messages are delivered in natural dialogue, the well-drawn characters speaking from the heart with wisdom derived from firsthand experience. "We keep working. We keep trying. 'Cause fuck everyone else, you know? We just do what we do....We keep trying hard." And plenty of humor leavens the tale: Travis releases two 4-foot caimans into the local pond and pees on a racist neighbor's steps, and Malik writes "dirty love letters" that Travis' grandmother reads and loves. Travis and feisty Natalie are there for each other, and teen readers will identify with them. Travis and Natalie are white; Malik is black; poverty and love connect them. A memorable story of good kids transcending rough lives. (Fiction. 14 & up)

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April 1, 2016

Gr 10 Up-In the opening scene of this powerful and unsettling novel, Travis is in the process of releasing two caimans-fearsome alligatorlike creatures-into the lake behind his grandparents' home. He claims that he is doing so to provide entertainment for his dying grandmother. Is his motivation this simple, or is his genuine love for his grandmother also a pretext for expressing the rage that seems to lie just beyond the realm of his understanding? No easy answers are provided, and readers are forced to decide for themselves if Travis is perpetrator, victim, or both. He spends much of the narrative searching for the heroin-addicted mother who abandoned him, and he suffered the depredations of foster care and the juvenile justice system before being taken in by his caring but poverty-stricken grandparents. Basketball provides solace and purpose for his life, but even here his violent nature intrudes, as he knocks a trash-talking opponent unconscious in a game. While he forms connections with Creature, a teammate who writes love letters to long-dead Russian princesses, and Natalie, a troubled girl who lives on the affluent side of the lake, Travis is, in the end, unable to overcome either his own impulses or the circumstances of his life. In a compelling but disturbing narrative voice, the protagonist recounts the assaults and other acts of aggression he commits in flat, uninflected, unemotional language, as if he were describing the deeds of someone else. VERDICT A unique, unforgettable tale that is a must-have for all YA collections.-Richard Luzer, formerly at Fair Haven Union High School, VT

Copyright 2016 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 15, 2016
Grades 9-12 There's not much laughing in Travis' life. His mother is a homeless heroin addict, he is living in a trailer park with his grandparents (his grandma dying of cancer, and his grandpa smoking his wife's medical marijuana), and Travis is dealing with anger management issues in his attempt to rejoin the high-school basketball team. The bright spots in his life include his best friend and fellow basketball-lover Creature; his wealthy, hot, across-the-lake neighbor, Natalie; and the two caimans he put into the lake so as to distract his grandmother with good stories during her final days. Hoffmeister takes readers down into Travis' drug- and poverty-ridden life, briefly bringing us up for air with Creature's seductive love letters to dead Russian princesses and Travis and Natalie's sweet romance. But the hard inevitability of teenagers trying desperately to survive a morass permeates this well-written and quite sad book. Still, Hoffmeister leaves the reader with the hope that Travis might ultimately thrive. This is the part, perhaps, where readers cry.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)

July 1, 2016
Travis's family is poor; his homeless mother struggles with drug addiction; his grandmother is severely ill; and his best friend is assaulted by a gang member. But Travis and those around him use dark, often strange humor to help them cope. This gritty novel is honest about its characters' emotions, but their creative ways of handling difficulties make for an ultimately hopeful outlook.

(Copyright 2016 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)