Whale Talk by Chris Crutcher

Ok, I'm going back to book reviews. They're nice and easy, and I think they're pretty enjoyable. This past weekend I made a trip to heaven a.k.a. Barnes and Noble and bought some books with some gift cards given to me at Christmas. Exciting so far isn't it? Ok, so back to the story.

I had absolutely no idea what books to buy until I came upon two books by a certain author named Chris Crutcher. I don't know if I mentioned this in my earlier blog about Deadline (also by Crutcher), but he is possibly one of my favorite authors. His books all deal with some kind of social issue and happen to be extremely easy to read. Whale Talk pretty much deals with everything. The book contains aspects of racism: the main character, The Tao (pronounced Dow) Jones is part white, part black, and part Japanese. Yes, his name does sound like the industrial average. But that's besides the point.

The Tao, also known as T.J. by... well almost everyone, was adopted as a young lad when the child services took him away from his mom because she only fed him once every three days. He had to go to some major counseling to get over that one, let me tell ya'. The book also deals with child abuse. T.J.'s major "enemy" has an African-American stepdaughter, whom he abuses on a regular basis. It deals with abuse in general, too. Every page seems to have another episode of somebody getting abused, whether it's the slow, crack-child freshman, whose brother died a few years back, or somebody's girlfriend. T.J. always connects with these people in some way and always feels the need to stand up for them. In order to make one of his least favorite people in school extremely angry, and give a group of misfit high schoolers a chance to win letters and wear lettermen jackets, which is a huge deal at his school, T.J. starts up a swim team.

The story, while it may seem jumpy in parts, has valuable lessons in it. The ending is a shocker and almost left me in tears when I read it... and I knew what was coming because I had already read it once. I highly recommend this book. I guarantee that you will get something out of it.

-Drew