Bright Shining World by Josh Swiller (review)

Wallace has been to fourteen different high schools, skipping town whenever his emotionally detached dad gets pulled somewhere new for work, a mysterious position he holds at energy monopoly Jackduke. In Wallace’s newest New York town, something is off with the high schoolers, who are prone to fits of hysteria, and Jackduke may somehow be causing it. As Wallace begins to talk to trees and hallucinate his deceased mother alongside the dad from Roseanne, he becomes personally invested in solving the mystery, especially if it means getting closer to hot cheerleader Megan Rose. This is a darkly humorous story, and Wallace, an unlikable, self-proclaimed outcast at school, has a strong narrative voice loaded with acerbic jokes (though the jokes sometimes miss), covering topics that range from masturbation to parental emotional neglect. The bizarre, overwrought elements in the story, from the talking trees to a four-foot-tall tennis ball named Susie to the corporation that harvests “clean” energy that sucks out people’s souls, will likely appeal to fans of Andrew Smith, and under the veil of sarcasm there’s a surprisingly effective moral about the ability of young people to implement change and the importance of focusing on climate issues.