Crutcher, Chris - Whale Talk

[oyceter]

I read Crutcher's Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes a long time ago, and while I liked it, for some reason I never looked for more of his books until I was asking my librarian for fluffy YA books featuring POC protagonists. She shoved this in my hands and said that it wasn't fluffy, but she loved it and it was awesome.

She was right (on both counts).

T.J. Jones (the "J" is redundant) is a great athlete who won't play for any of his school teams, and some people might say he has a giant chip on his shoulder. Given that he was abused as a kid before being adopted by his current parents, given his multiracial heritage in an oh-so-white Idaho town, and given the personalities of the people involved in his high school athletics, this isn't far from the truth. But when his teacher decides to put together a swim team, T.J. sees it as an opportunity to assemble seven misfits (himself included) and get them all letter jackets to thumb his nose at the school.

This sounds like every other sports movie out there, but it's not. The misfits aren't lovable; many of them are angry and hurt and lash out. The book touches on themes (sizism, ablism, racism, sexism, abusive relationships, class, etc.) that could have turned it into an after-school special, only Crutcher is really good at making everyone so human, even the villains of the piece (scummy humans, but humans nonetheless).

Argh. I'm not sure how to write about this so it doesn't sound boring. It's really dynamic, I love T.J.'s narrative voice (1st person), I really like how Crutcher brings in all these separate elements (abuse, forgiveness, when to fight and when not to, honesty, social outcasts, sports) and makes them work beautifully together. Without his prose and T.J.'s very down-to-earth take on things, the ending might be a tearjerker, but it's not.

Anyway, this is really good, so just go read it instead of listening to my incoherent babbling.

Comments

[minnow1212.livejournal.com]

I guess I should caveat that Stotan!, which features four high school guys, has an Asian character who might have stereotypical elements? He's a cool character, their swimming coach, but (iirc), the four guys are white and, of course, he's in the mentor role, and I believe he's a badass martial artist too.

Actually, hmm, now I want to go back and reread Crutcher's books in order and see if there's an evolution. B/c if I remember from the ones I read, he tended to focus on issues of social justice, and he often had casts that included people of different races and gay characters. But I feel like the protags of the ones I read, which would have been earlier ones, were all white straight boys? Unless I'm misremembering? I wonder if moving a POC to the protag role represents something newer for him.

[oyceter]

Oh, interesting... I will try to keep an eye out on that as I go through his backlist. Maybe I'll try going in chronological order.