On reading the description of this book, I wondered how Quick was going to handle the topic: a teenage boy plans to kill one of his classmates and then kill himself. Pretty depressing and hard to relate to stuff. But I had faith in Quick; he deals with tough topics and creates likeable characters with different problems and I loved The Silver Linings Playbook and to be honest, he doesn't disappoint with Forgive me, Leonard Peacock.
From the outset, we are aware of the protagonist's plan to carry out murder-suicide: he is honest, clearly depressed and hurt by the world. However, I felt drawn to Leonard. Of course, there is no justifying his intended actions but his disdain and disappointment by the world resonate true. To be honest, a lot depends on whether you can relate to Leonard, I think this book would have been harder to get into if I thought he was an unrelatable character. But I liked him. I liked that he felt he could trust his history teacher and was drawn to one positive person in his otherwise bleak world. Leonard reminded me a lot of Holden in The Catcher In The Rye; they both struggle with the "fakeness" of the real/adult world. Leonard is perplexed that people go to jobs they hate, every day of their lives when it makes them so unhappy and then to essentially lie about it. Quick captures this disillusioned teenage voice well and places you in his shoes; slowly revealing his story and justifications for his actions. Leonard is clearly a very intelligent individual (as shown through his perspectives in his favourite Holocaust classes) and chooses to challenge adult life, but unfortunately twisting it a little, in the same way Holden does in TCITR.
One aspect I loved about this book was how Quick uses and changes the language throughout the book. Most of the story is told from the first person perspective but on a number of occasions, he switches to stanzas instead of prose and this had a beautiful, poetic effect. One chapter is extremely powerful: he uses one word per page and although it may sound a bit arty and over the top, it was a perfect use of the layout at a crucial moment in the book - I held my breathe turning each page.
I read this book on my Kindle and this provided me with my only grumble about the book. There is extensive use of footnotes and often the footnote is quite detailed and long, often offering further explanation from Leonard, like his Wikipedia searches or a backstory. I liked this extra detail but on the Kindle, I had to keep clicking to follow the link and going backwards and forwards, sometimes losing my page. It's not an actual complaint about the story and maybe it's different in a paper copy but I felt going through all the rigmarole on the Kindle really disrupted my reading and the flow of the story.
Overall, I really liked this book. It deals with a difficult but all too real subject in the same thread as We Need To Talk About Kevin. For me, these events are all too frequent today and need to be dealt with and not shied away from. Quick does the subject justice, delving into a teenagers mind and trying to decipher the million feelings of loneliness, isolation and the layers that each indivual has; the human and monster in all of us. A thought provoking book that encourages us to keep fighting, against each adversity we face, and learning to live with the consequences of each event we have overcome.
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