Review: Picaresque first novel
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 6, 2014
It's hard to describe this book because it's surreal and has to do with two normally unrelated subjects--Scrabble and fracking--and the hero is an insecure prep schooler with a scholarship from a fracking company and a funny name (Winston Crwth), perhaps related to the Winston of George Orwell's dystopian "1984".Winston Crwth's world is also dystopian.  His school is smack dab in the middle of Pennsylvania's fracking paradise, and he hangs out with eccentrics like Dr. U, the poet laureate who never actually writes poetry and suicidally drinks the polluted water and other chemicals; Thomasina, a Susan Sontag-looking girl who's the headmaster's daughter; Rich, his horny, dyslexic roommate; and David Dark, the wheelchair-bound son of the CEO of Dark Oil & Gas, the fracking company that's ruining the health and environment of Pennsylvania.  His goal becomes meeting the former beauty queen, now governor, Linda King LaRue, and bringing her the polluted water from his area to be analyzed, and he joins the state Scrabble tournament to achieve that.At the same time as the tournament there are thousands of people in Harrisburg protesting fracking and spending days on line to get clean water from the governor's bathroom.  Or something.Yeah, it's a crazy nonsensical plot, but it's oddly entertaining and gets its point across about fracking (which is not a word that can be used in Scrabble.  Not yet, anyway.)  It's a short book that can be read in a couple of sittings.  A tad too frenetic for my taste and age (hence the 4 stars).  But go for it.