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Book Review : Ian Truman - A Teenage Suicide (2013)


Order A TEENAGE SUICIDE here

''Girls like that come and go all the time. She'll run back to her suburb and her rich parents as soon as she'll get bored. I've been around long enough and I've seen this a million times. She was giving you shit fore eating meat earlier, I heard her.''

''Yeah.''

''I saw her eating a hamburger before the show.''

I've said it a thousand times: I hate it when fiction is being didactic on purpose. When it's trying to ''teach the kids a lesson.'' If your story doesn't have the allegorical power to make itselg understood, don't use your characters to break it down and explain it. It's a huge pet peeve of mine. I was a kid not all that long ago. A TEENAGE SUICIDE, by Ian Truman made me feel like I was a angry, horny and chaotic 17 year old again. That, without versing into easy, bullshit didactism. The world is an exhilarating yet frightening place for young minds and Ian Truman, like many of us young men, has been 17 and facing the future.

A TEENAGE SUICIDE is the story of three teenagers living in the city of L'Assomption, Québec. Conor, Jake and Angela are all graduating from high school and facing important choices in regards to their future. Conor had to choose which college to go to, which means to potentially turn down a scholarship. Angela is trying to figure out how to make a living as an artist and Jake is trying to figure out what he's going to do right after the summer. This is all cute and life-affirming until someone throws a major monkey wrench in their plans. The Electrolux factory that employs a good chunk of the local population is closing down * and L'Assomption is facing economic downturn. Someone very close to the three kids will commit something irreparable (hence the title) that will send the kids on an unexpected existential drift.

Being a young adult is a very important part of someone's life. Breaking free of the mold of high school often makes or breaks you. To me, it was a very important time of intellectual emancipation and I found bits of this exhilarating feeling again, going through the pages of A TEENAGE SUICIDE. Reading of Conor and Jake figuring things out and finding out about alternate lifestyles they were once sheltered from by the predictable small town routine made me nostalgic like you wouldn't believe. There is a chapter where Conor is browsing the internet looking for some new music and stumbles upon a new, different way of life brought several good memories back to my mind. Needless to say, it's the saddest reviewing cliché, but I identified with Conor's burning need to break through the boundaries of his small life. 

''I hate it. I hate this place. The town, the coop. I hate it.''

''Your dad is sweet.''

''I still hate it,'' he repeated. He didn't have much more he wanted to say about that. He didn't want to get bitter around Angie, so he didn't say anything. He looked around and tried to think of something else. 

A TEENAGE SUICIDE could have went wrong in several ways, especially after the said suicide, but Ian Truman always manage to keep it steered right. His kids aren't metaphorical beacons of wisdom. They live their grief in the crooked, self-righteous and melodramatic way. I appreciated that aspect of A TEENAGE SUICIDE, because it felt real. Part of being young is being absolutely incapable of putting things in perspective. Everything is raw pleasure or raw pain. Finding an emotion in-between to that is something that comes in your twenties and for some people, it never comes at all. 

It's not easy to write a book for young people that has the right tone, but Ian Truman showed it was possible with A TEENAGE SUICIDE. It's a more peaceful book than Truman's previous works, but it's also his most exhaustive novel. He goes into great details to break down the intricacies of a young adult's life on the page. Truman doesn't lecture young minds. He rather speaks with them as he explains the beauties and the hardships of adult life in their own words. A TEENAGE SUICIDE will fascinate the young and bring a wave of nostalgia to the old better than a cool summer night can. 

*This is 100 % true, by the way. There is an Electrolux factory in L'Asssomption and it is closing  down next January. Also, I do have family living in L'Assomption. Freaky, I know.

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