CECIL IN SPACE

Despite the title, Hite’s latest is no sci-fi, futuristic effort, but a modern novel with a first-person narrative with echoes of such classics as Catcher in the Rye. Cecil lives in “historic” Bricksburg, a Virginia backwater made up of colorful eccentrics, where the biggest excitement is over who altered a local sign to read “Welcome to Hysteric Pricksburg.” Such vandalism is of felony proportions, and the leading suspect happens to be Cecil’s best friend, Isaac, who maintains his innocence as well as his cool. Throw in Cecil’s romantic struggle between the town’s fickle bombshell and the girl-next-door, Isaac’s younger sister, and this has all the makings of a conventional read; it transcends such labels with the addition of Hite’s keen sense of the absurd, Cecil’s mature, witty observations and his morose pronouncements about life on Earth. Cecil’s ongoing discourse on the problems of the universe grow trying, but readers will relate to—and laugh over—his simple struggle to find his way. (Fiction. 12-14)