KISSING THE RAIN

Despite too many CAPITALIZED WORDS, this Catcher in the Rye-style narrative told by an English teenager pulled into a murder trial is successfully disquieting. Moo, named by the peers who torment and pummel him for his fatness, spends his time on a highway bridge because the speeding traffic distracts him from his own life. One day, road-rage leads to murder, and then a frame-up involving an all-powerful mobster. Moo’s truthful testimony would free the mobster, who threatens him fiercely toward that end; but corrupt, coercive cops want Moo to lie. What should he do? How will his decisions affect his punching-bag status and that of his Little Person semi-friend? Moo’s working-class voice will speak to reluctant readers. George Orwell’s 1984 is an ancestor (“Good = bad. TRUTH = lies”); the hopeless situation and closure-less ending recall Francine Prose’s After (2003). Less of an actual mystery than it first seems, but effectively oppressive. (Fiction. YA)