A 13-year-old protagonist’s quest for meaning
The Sun’s book club is discussing Boo, a new novel by Neil Smith. It’s about Oliver “Boo” Dalrymple, a 13-year-old boy who narrates the book from the afterlife. We will be chatting online with Neil Smith at noon on June 26. Plan to join the conversation at vancouversun.com/ books.
Melanie Jackson: Boo is a delicious plum pudding of perspectives on spirituality. For starters, the novel is a half-tribute to, half-send-up of Waiting for Godot. In Samuel Beckett’s play, two adult — in years if not maturity — characters wait for the absent Godot, or God, to show up and give their absurd lives some meaning. Godot doesn’t, and the two make slapstick attempts to try to commit suicide. They fail and just keep on waiting.
In Boo, some of the characters in the heaven-like Town similarly get tired of waiting for Zig. (“Zig” being, I take it, Boo’s idea of God as Sg, for seaborgium, the ultimate element in his beloved periodic table circa 1979.) For the angry, trapped 13-year-olds, there’s nothing slapstick about suicide. They’re dead serious about it. Literally.
The next existence, or the previous one, or whatever the alternative is at all, has to be better than dull, too-perfect Town, they reason.
I find their anger refreshing compared to the Godot characters’ haplessness. Better to rage at the futility of existence than be cowed by it.
However, there’s a more hopeful, uplifting spiritual element to Boo — and this duality is part of what makes the novel so brilliant. Sure, you have the Waiting for Godot thing on one hand. On the other, there’s a strong whiff of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. There is a Christ figure in Boo, just as in Wardrobe.
Monique Sherrett: I like Melanie’s interpretation of Waiting for Godot, and I had not connected the element Sg to Zig. Nicely done.
I often think of science outside the realm of religion but of course they are linked. That connection to the mysteries of the world draws me to the conclusion that Oliver’s recitation of the periodic table is like praying the rosary. Each element is its own mystery to be reminded of and remembered.
The novel itself is a reminder of the joyful mysteries of Boo’s short life. Watching the stars with Johnny, for example. And also the luminous, sorrowful and glorious mysteries such as Boo’s realization of the actual turn of events, the triumphs and trials of friendship, the bullying and also the comfort of family and friends.
To me the novel is an exploration. We’re on a journey with Boo as he comes to understand himself. But we are also his parents who must be wondering why, what led to this, has he gone to a better place. The novel is their/our answer.
Julia Denholm: I have to confess that I’m struggling a bit with this book, and have not yet finished it. Maybe it’s because my 13-year-old self was miserably unhappy in my own world, which seemed to be populated entirely by 13-year-old girls who lived to torment me. Consequently, “Town” and its occupants hits a little too close to home for me, given that it reminds me of the Purgatory that was my early adolescence.
I will give the book one more go this week, to see if my interest in Boo’s burgeoning transformation is enough to pull me through. But this is definitely an “it’s not you it’s me” situation.
Ian Weir: Yes, the novel puts an intriguing spin on Sartre’s “hell is other people” formulation, doesn’t it? Purgatory is absolutely other 13-year-olds.
I’m not sure I’m seeing the Waiting for Godot connection quite so clearly, though, given that Godot is about the desperate quest for existential meaning.
It seems to me that Boo is more fundamentally about a movement toward human connection and wholeness — in other words, a quest to evolve out of adolescent solipsism.
In that sense, there’s a beautiful irony in the fact that these 13-year-olds are “condemned” to Town for 50 years. Kind of a minimum time- frame for 13-year-olds to become human, if I remember my junior high school experiences clearly ...