Book Club #1 - Boom!

Boom! by Mark Haddon is a book I originally read in the third grade. I must have not had very good reading comprehension back then, since there were many things I don’t remember about this book.

First of all, it is aggressively British. Of course, I mean that in the best way possible. The main character is kind of a dumb little a-hole, and the British humor helps make him still like-able in spite of that.

Second, I remember it taking a lot longer to get to the action where they figure out what’s going on. I guess I must have been kinda bored with the childhood antics and wanted to get to solving the main mystery of the teachers’ identities. Strangely enough, that changed as an adult, since the humor was enough to keep me along for the ride, not to mention the pacing doesn’t seem slow at all.

I remember thinking as a kid that perhaps it was all in Charlie and Jim’s head that some conspiracy was going on. As an adult, it’s clearly established early on that the teachers were hiding something. It doesn’t even take that long before they get threatened to stop snooping around in the teachers’ business. I suppose I just didn’t catch the details like the table being melted, as that would have tipped me off to the fact that there’s more than meets the eye to the situation.

Before this book was re-written and released again under the title Boom!, this book was called Gridzbi Spudvetch! I actually do like the original title better, in spite of the author being dissatisfied it. The phrase appears early on in the book when the teachers are having a conversation with each other in this strange tongue. Certain parts, especially “spudvetch,” sound very Slavic to me. Had I not had prior experience, perhaps I would have thought they were Soviet spies at the beginning. I do think them being aliens works really well though.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable read. Very British, very strange, very fun. Personally, I listened to the audiobook narrated by Julian Rhind-Tutt, who did an amazing job. I’d recommend that version if you wanted to listen yourself.

Next month, I’ll be covering Leonard, My Life as a Cat by Carlie Sorosiak. Feel free to read it for yourself before I cover it in that blog post. See you then!