Being Henry David by Cal Armistead
My rating: 3/5 cats
i don’t know why i am even bothering to write this, since the best thoreau-related book review has already been written, but i will try.
this book is not about thoreau. not directly.
it is about a boy who wakes up in penn station with no memory of who he is or where he has come from. all he has is ten dollars and a copy of walden, which one of new york’s more colorful homeless individuals immediately tries to eat.
not a great day.
so, he doesn’t know who he is, but he’s got a strange feeling that he is on the run, since when he comes near some police officers, his body has a strange reaction. so instead of trying to figure anything out right away, he joins up with a teenage runaway named jack and his sister nessa, calling himself “henry david” (like the author of the book!! which is a better name than “ten dollars”) until he can make a better plan.
while with them, something violent occurs, so henry (now “hank”), now seriously injured follows jack to what is supposed to be a safe haven, but is, if anything, worse than what has happened so far. so, escape part two is necessary.
ugh. the days are getting worse.
and hank still doesn’t have his memory back, although he has discovered that he does have a photographic memory, which is nice. and ironic.
with the photographic part of his memory, he is able to memorize pretty much all of walden, and that’s where he goes when he makes his grand escape from new york, leaving jack and nessa behind.
once in concord (don’t worry, i am not going to do too much more plot-regurgitation), he meets a girl named hailey and a tattooed biker-librarian named thomas, and tries to piece together the bits of his past, while both hallucinating the presence of the real henry david, and trying to emulate him in ways.
i am pretty keen on amnesia-fiction, so i liked this one, even though its secrets aren’t too hard to guess. i also like photographic-memory stories, and am jealous every time a character has one. cam jansen anyone? “click?” never worked for me.
this is part mystery novel, part healing novel. as hank slowly starts to remember his past, he also has to deal with what he finds there, and that is a stronger storyline than the actual mystery-part. i enjoyed the story of a character trying to escape, trying to start over, and eventually, trying to accept.
all through good old thoreau.
oh, which is another thing i like: books that might lead young readers to other books. learning!
read my book reviews on goodreads
