Who is Jesse Flood? [Audiobook] [Audio CD]

Fourteen-year-old Jesse Flood lives with his constantly-fighting parents in a small town in Northern Ireland. A sensitive boy with a head full of strange and poignant stories, he doesn't feel that he fits in with other people his age, although he desperately wishes he did. He doesn't quite know what to make of the opposite sex. He's starting to have feelings for girls - just a little - but he doesn't actually know how to talk to one without making a fool of himself, and anyways he suspects they're more trouble than they're worth. He worries about the devastation of the environment, and wonders how he can best make his life meaningful. In other words, Jesse is coping with the usual struggles and challenges of early adolescence. Perhaps most importantly, he's trying to figure out who he really is, who he wants to be, who he's supposed to be. Is he shy, courageous, foolish, clumsy, persistent, naive, sinister, unique, lovable, difficult, caring, wise? Perhaps all of the above?

The novel unfolds in a series of vignettes, most of which could easily stand alone as short stories. Malachy Doyle's powerful, richly evocative writing packs more thought and emotion into a few pages than some writers manage in an entire novel this length. Doyle somehow manages to write poetic prose without ever losing Jesse's distinctively adolescent voice, and it never feels stilted or artificial. Jesse's narrative of the present is interspersed with flashbacks, but the structure of the story is never hard to follow. In fact, this book is deceptively easy to read, for a novel of such subtlety and profundity. Nothing is really resolved in the end (is it ever, in the real world?), and yet I came to the last page with a satisfying feeling of resolution.

From the very first chapter, in which Jesse sneaks into a train tunnel and presses himself into a niche in the wall while a train rushes past just inches away - seeking out the noise, discomfort, and fear as a way of escaping his emotional turmoil as he watches his family fall apart - I felt this book wash over me like a dream, like a memory of my own dark years between childhood simplicity and adult clarity. The particulars of Jesse's life may bear no resemblance to mine, but his thoughts and emotions ring true. His innocent wisdom, combined with a tender vulnerability, makes Jesse Flood an especially endearing character. Over the course of the novel - not even two hundred pages - Jesse became so real to me, I'm almost a little sad I can't pick up the phone and call him and ask him what's he's done with himself these past ten years.

I can't believe I'm the first person on Amazon to write a review for this wonderful novel! There's something wrong when tawdry teenybopper trash is flying off the shelves while a splendid little gem like this remains underappreciated.