Cruise Control
Gr. 7-10. In this companion toStuck in Neutral(2000), Trueman revisits the story of Shawn, the developmentally disabled teen whose point of view made that first novel so memorable. This time the narrator is Shawn's older brother, Paul, a gifted athlete. The irony of the family situation is not lost on Paul ("what a sadistic madman God must be to have thrown Shawn and me into the same family"). While Paul loves his brother, he hates their father, who, unable to cope, has abandoned the family. But Paul, like Shawn, is a victim of circumstance, and Trueman does a passionately convincing job portraying a boy who feels trapped and suffocated by responsibilities he never asked to shoulder. As he puts it, his life is "like a car roaring down the freeway in cruise control . .  and I can't even slow down." Only at the end does the story stray briefly into wish-fulfillment territory, but by that time, readers will be so invested in Paul's survival that few will quibble.Michael CartCopyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.