LARRY AND THE MEANING OF LIFE

Josh Swensen, the “hyperactive, solve-the-world’s-problems-by-dinnertime” boy who recreated himself as counterculture hero Larry (The Gospel According to Larry, 2001, etc.), is back for a third installment. Now he’s lethargic and depressed, trying to find his place in the world, and readers may get impatient wallowing with him in his angst. But a series of seemingly over-the-top events—a decapitated dog, a lecherous guru, a plot to blow up Thoreau’s Walden Pond—shake him up, and readers will discover, along with Josh, that they have been treated to a delicious game orchestrated by Brown theater student Beth precisely to get her friend back on track. But it gets more complicated: What is the game and what is real? Josh’s first-person narrative, complete with footnotes, is framed by Tashjian’s narrative, herself a character to whom Josh delivers his story. Readers who have read the first two Larry stories will most appreciate this, but new readers will get caught up in a wise and humorous tale and learn something about the meaning of life. (Fiction. 11 & up)