Everybody Sees the Ants (review)

Lucky Linderman has been bullied by Nader McMillan for years, but no one has ever intervened; even when Lucky starts exploring suicide, the concern about his mental health doesn't extend to stopping the bullying. When Nader grinds Lucky's face into the concrete at the local pool, Lucky's mother has had enough. They escape to her brother Dave's house in Arizona, where they accept the unbalanced hospitality of his mercurial, pill-addicted wife as they both try to sort out their anger over the passivity of Lucky's dad and reckon with their own passivity as well. Also ongoing for years have been Lucky's dreams about visiting his grandfather in the Vietnamese POW camp where he died, dreams that are so vivid that Lucky actually awakens with souvenirs from his time in the jungle—cigars, chewing gum, banana stickers, etc. Lucky's dreams, combined with his growing understanding of his mother, his aunt and uncle, and a girl he meets while in Arizona, help him navigate his way to a resolution to his problems that accepts all of the messiness and failures of the people around him, particularly the adults who are just as tormented by their own demons as he is by his. The dreams offer oblique but powerful messages for him to interpret; they function to put his experiences into perspective until he is able to act on the truths that he discovers. The unusual and occasionally comic juxtaposition of the POW experience with Lucky's victimization throws each into sharp relief without trivializing either, offering compelling food for thought about the things we can control and the things we can't, and how that distinction ultimately determines the need for action.