(by Brian Francis)
I wish I’d read the original Canadian version of this rather than the Americanized one (I mean, geez, readers in the US are not going to be totally confused by a reference to Tim Hortons), but ah well. (I wonder if this would have been Americanized to the same extent if it were being published now – it came out in Canada in 2004 and the US in 2005.) Anyway: I devoured this book over the course of a weekend spent home sick with a cold, and I found it to be a fun read, despite some elements that felt off-putting (though accurate for the book’s time period – it’s set in 1984) (fatphobia/diet culture, use of the r-word when talking about people with intellectual disabilities, some stereotypes about Italians).
The novel’s narrator is Peter Paddington, who’s in 8th grade and notes, on the book’s first page, that there are “lots of things” about himself that “need fixing.” He’s overweight, he’s uncomfortable with the changes in his body as he goes through puberty (especially his suddenly-prominent nipples) and he doesn’t have any friends who are boys. He gets bullied at school and gets teased for hanging out with the girls in his class, so he starts volunteering as a library aide during recess; the person he hangs out with most is his neighbor Daniela, who goes to Catholic school (her parents are Italian), failed sixth grade, and swears a lot for a fourteen-year-old (but in a way I found totally charming). Peter is definitely attracted to guys but doesn’t totally realize/admit it to himself: but somehow all the “bedtime stories” his mind invents as he drifts off to sleep at night involve male classmates, teachers, or acquaintances, with Peter sometimes playing himself in these scenarios and sometimes appearing as a girl.
The book follows Peter through the course of a school year, and in some ways nothing much happens and in other ways a whole lot happens. The book is good at capturing the everyday ups and downs of Peter’s 8th-grade life, from arguments with family members to solo trips to the convenience store to the intrigue of setting foot inside the church Daniela goes to. (There’s a whole Virgin Mary subplot that’s pretty great.) The mood is very ’80s, with perms, leg warmers, Jane Fonda workouts, and Def Leppard t-shirts, but Peter’s inner life, with his desire to be a different version of himself and his questions about who he is/who he should be, feels pretty timeless.
Leave a Reply