2015 book 7

Andrew Smith's Grasshopper Jungle
My book club has been calling this one "the semen book" based on vague things we had heard about it, so you can bet I was not super excited to read it--THANKS, FYA, for forcing me to read a book by a DUDE. Especially one where the most common line was "It made me horny."* I mean, it's interesting that it's about a boy who is confused about his sexuality, in that he wants to sleep with/loves both his girlfriend and his best (guy) friend, but his constant thoughts about sex are almost like a parody of how teenage boys supposedly think.  But anyway, it's all normal stuff--at least until some terrible bully teenagers accidentally start a plague and the book turns into a SUPER INSANE APOCALYPSE OF BUGS! (I think it's unfair that the official description blames the protagonist and his friend.) Anyway, I was way more into it after that. Smith has a deft touch with the foreshadowing--and it's nice to have a little bit of humor to go with your giant man-eating bug apocalypse. I mean, it's deliberately repetitive, and the matter of fact narration can be a bit dry, but in general, I liked this MUCH more than I expected to. There is definitely a lot of semen-related talk though. A LOT. B+.


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* I did a search and the word "horny" only appears 65 times ("only"?) but it feels like a lot more. I did not search for associated words like "horniness."