Sorry You’re Lost by Matt Blackstone (review)

It’s been three short months since his mother died, and Denny is desperate for a distraction, but his usual outlet of annoying his teachers is beginning to have consequences. His best friend, Manny, who has serious family problems of his own, comes up with a bogus fundraising scam to enable Manny and Denny to attract girls with expensive stuff. Meanwhile, Denny’s dad has ballooned to three hundred pounds and is acting out in ways akin to Denny’s own, but with a meaner edge. The only bright spot in Denny’s life is Sabrina, who challenges Denny to stop his pretense of boisterous cheer and just be himself. While Denny’s grief is palpable throughout the novel, his manic narration, which expands every expression into apologetic awkwardness, stretches his story nearly to the breaking point of readerly patience, especially for a realistic middle-school novel. This narrative technique does, however, convey just how wearing this defense mechanism is for those around him; his attempts at humor provoke embarrassed sympathy but ultimately lead the adults in his life as well as most of his peers to give him an uncomfortable brushoff, rather than insisting that he get the help and support he and his father need to deal with their grief. That his ultimate breakdown, which finds him laughing and crying uncontrollably in the hallway until he passes out, doesn’t result in a trip to guidance counselor strains credulity, and Manny is more of a caricature than a character. There is some ingenuity in the way Denny solves his problems, though, and the cinematic happy ending, though pat, is in keeping with the hyperbolic tone of the novel. Middle-school readers looking for someone more awkward than they feel will find that here.