Review: Back to the 60s with a twist
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 2, 2013
On the face of it, this is out-and-out YA. After all, a YA book normally has protagonists in their late teens, and the main plot arc is `coming of age'. This book shouts all those things.But wait...If you said the names Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper , or Ritchie Valens to your average sixteen-year-old, he/she would give you one of those looks. What? Who? But if you're of an older generation, the songs would play in your head. You might even start to sing the words.This book commences with a prologue, on that fatal winter's day when Holly and his mates died in a plane crash. Old farts like me will know the names, know the songs, know about that accident. It's a brilliant prologue because when it's finished, the reader knows something the main characters do not, and this fact adds so much to the story of the Stratocaster, which is the star of the show. I found myself thinking, `if you only knew' - rather a lot.But as they say, that's not all. The other aspect of this story which takes it over into adulthood, is the town itself. Dodge, Iowa, with its old cars, vinyl records, an all-purpose bar-come-eatery and church on Sundays. The corn is beginning to grow, the water flows around a great, big rock in the creek, where the kids gather to talk and do a bit of skinny-dipping. Kevin angles for a kiss, and hopes for more. School's finished, so they need jobs. Any kind of job.Do you remember all that stuff? I do. The offset of that, is I appreciate all the modern technology, so I can indulge in a bit of nostalgia, while still understanding how the kids would feel, effectively cut off from their own generation.So I was well and truly sucked in. The story is told from eighteen-year-old Kevin's point of view as he wrestles with all those issues of growing up; honesty, trust, sex and doing what's right. Limberg has drawn all his characters with loving care. You very quickly get a grasp on the teenagers, and their different personalities. The secondary characters are just as real. I could see this story roll out like a movie script. The only people who are a tad two-dimensional are the bad guys, the camo-dudes protecting the Secret of the Tower - but that's actually okay, because of the way the book is written. That's what Kevin thinks; who are you, a mere reader, to argue?This is a terrific story for people of all ages. I loved it.