School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-Pete Hautman's novel (S & S, 2005) is brought to life in Norm Lee's performance. Doug and Andy, best friends since childhood, developed a careless-if not downright unhealthy-interest in fire as they entered adolescence. In other ways they seemed to grow in different directions: Andy was outgoing and successful in school and socially, while Doug's proclivities seem to lie with detailed handwork and listening to Andy's exploits. At 17, Doug builds a model train, town, and replica (in matchsticks) of the Golden Gate Bridge in his basement, one of his many obsessions that intensifies when he stops taking his prescribed psychopharmaceuticals. Then Doug and Andy phone in a bomb threat to the high school and Doug's world unravels in a calamity neatly foreshadowed by the tree house fire the boys experienced three years earlier. Hautman's characterizations are realistic, making Doug both credible and barely sympathetic. The adults are presented from Doug's vantage and so, while they seem to say mostly the right things, they inspire distrust on the listeners' part. Because of its brevity and well-shaped plot, this audiobook will have wide appeal among teens who need their stories delivered quickly in order to stick with them.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
The strength of Hautman's (Godless) painfully sad novel is the wisecracking but clearly unreliable voice of its narrator, 17-year-old Douglas MacArthur Hanson who admits, "I'm not only disturbed, I'm obsessed." One of his passions is "Madham," a town he's building for his model railroad, complete with a 1:800 scale replica of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's also fixated on a pretty girl who clearly wants nothing to do with him. And he's overly reliant on his only friend, Andy Morrow, a fellow junior who is the popular and outgoing yang to Dougie's outcast and introverted yin. Hautman expertly teases out the truth about a tragic incident that occurred "at the Tuttle place" three years earlier, a mystery that propels the story to its horrific conclusion. Dougie is as mathematically gifted and socially inept as the autistic narrator of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but he also has a sophisticated wit. During a lapse in conversation at one of his $95-an-hour therapy sessions, he observes, "We stare at each other for about $1.40." His self-deprecating comments and wry observations make his spiral into self-destruction all the more heartbreaking. (One measure of how sympathetically the author has portrayed him is that even though he stalks a classmate, you root for him to get away with it.) Hautman once again proves his keen ability for characterization and for building suspense. Ages 12-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(Middle School, High School) Gifted in math, and recognizably clever when constructing architectural models (he's building an elaborate railroad system in his basement), Doug reveals that it's human interaction he can't figure out. ""I'm a quiet kid, pretty much invisible,"" he says in a precise, unemotional voice, as this unreliable narrator begins his story. Invisibility is Doug's rationale for explaining a range of rejection, from teacher irritation to peer scorn, particularly from pretty and popular Melissa Haverman, who is disgusted by what readers will recognize as Doug's stalker behavior. But Doug reports one near-perfect relationship, the one he has with his best friend, Andy. Gradually, however, that friendship is revealed to be not what it seems. There are secrets from their past that Doug won't discuss, and hints from their present life that skew his tale. Why is there a strange man in Andy's house? What fuels Doug's increasingly complex rendering of their intertwined initials? What medication is Doug refusing to take? Reading this psychological thriller is much like putting together one of Doug's railroad bridges: connections are being made, but the realities being built may be imitations of life rather than the real thing. The tension comes from entering Doug's private hell and learning what put him there. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Dougie Hanson is invisible to nearly everyone in this haunting, lonely tale. He's extremely close to his best friend, Andy, even though Andy's a popular athlete. When they aren't together, Dougie works on the elaborate model train he's been building for nearly three years; the 11-foot-long suspension bridge built of matchsticks is nearly done. The bridge contains 22,400 matches in all (Dougie likes both numbers and matches). As the bridge approaches completion, glimpses from Doug's eyes reveal a life more troubled than he admits. His parents worry, his therapist asks if he's taking his meds and a female schoolmate accuses him of stalking. The mentally ill Dougie, who evokes echoes of Faulkner with his unreliable narration, is confronted with truths he can't bear. The deceptively simple prose doesn't keep secrets from its readers, but Dougie's harrowing mysteries are no less tragic for their visibility. (Fiction. 12-16) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Gr. 7-10. It's hard to tell if Hautman meant this to be a mystery, but it's clear from the start that there's something not right about the relationship between narrator Doug Hanson and his best friend, Andy Morrow. Doug, a self-proclaimed nerd, is primarily interested in building a matchstick replica of the Golden Gate Bridge for his model railway town. Andy is popular, a football player and actor. But the boys live next door to each other and talk from their bedroom windows at night. In an almost robotic voice that still manages to be intensely insightful, Doug takes readers to his school, where he is mocked and eventually beaten, and to his neighborhood, where he turns into a Peeping Tom, watching school star Melanie Haver undress. Hautman does a superb job of crafting the odd sanctuary that is Doug's mind. But Doug's defenses are crumbling, and the secret he's been keeping about Andy is oozing through the cracks. The truth about Andy won't come as a surprise, but there are some unexpected plot turns here, and the chilling but ambiguous denouement is definitely unsettling. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2005 Booklist
