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Last year, there was a mini explosion of excitement for \u00a0We All Looked Up<\/a><\/em>, Tommy Wallach’s<\/a> novel about four \u00a0Seattle high schoolers \u00a0who wake up one day to a small green dot in the sky, discovering that a meteor may or may not obliterate everything in a few week’s time. Just the fact of their probable annihilation changes their lives, in the same way old Nirvana songs sound way more meaningful because Kurt Cobain is gone. Lots of readers saw shades of The Breakfast Club<\/em> in the \u00a0story, as unlikely \u00a0buddyships formed \u00a0between \u00a0the characters\u2014each looking for answers, and met with military curfews and lock-ins and violence. \u00a0In that book, the end of the world set off \u00a0apocalyptic hookups, rapid coming-of-age, and teen emancipation, as everyone \u00a0tore about looking for the place they belonged in time to say goodbye.<\/p>\nTommy’s new book, Thanks for the Trouble<\/a><\/em>, out today<\/a>, asks how you find meaning *without* a hard deadline. Our hero, Parker, is a non-verbal teen who likes ditching school to hang out in old hotels. He’s a bit of a Holden Caulfield, if Holden’s wounds were easier to spot at the outset; also, Parker’s reliance on a notebook to communicate doesn’t allow him the brash overconfidence \u00a0that hooked everyone when \u00a0they discovered \u00a0Catcher in the Rye \u00a0<\/em>(“One of the biggest reasons I left Eton Hills was because I was surrounded by phonies.” <3). You get \u00a0nabbed by Tommy’s \u00a0story when Parker encounters a rare bird* \u00a0in the lobby of one of San Francisco’s \u00a0oldest hotels. “Zelda” (=\/= Fitzgerald) is \u00a0a pretty enigma with silver hair and a giant wad of cash who \u00a0tells Parker that she plans to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge after giving the last of her money away.<\/p>\n Both are very good at whipping up stories: Parker writes melancholic little fables in his book that win over Zelda; Zelda tells Parker that she was born in Germany \u00a0240 years earlier but doesn’t age, \u00a0and is tired of taking in \u00a0the “grief”of the world, hence the bridge. Everything gets heavier \u00a0the older you are, as you know. But is she telling the truth?<\/p>\n Part-Looking for Alaska<\/em>, part-Belzhar<\/em>, the book is incredibly sweet, and the halfway-fantasy aspect distracts you from all the big ideas Tommy Wallach slips into it. After finishing, I had a bit of a think about how you can reimagine John Green’s books \u00a0(for example) as folktales: “Paper Towns<\/a> \u00a0a is the story of a boy visited by a magical girl in the night who disappears into the forest. The boy searches for her and journeys far, far away, only to find she has turned into someone different<\/em>.” One of the best and least disguised YA fables is John Marsden’s \u00a0The Journey<\/em>, while you may remember that \u00a0SparkLife’s own Kat Rosenfield created an incredible magic realism tale with the mermaid-tinged \u00a0Inland<\/a><\/em>. That mildly supernatural \u00a0style \u00a0allows you to look past the mundane details of your life as a teenager (“Ugh, homework. Ugh, parents and teachers.”) and view \u00a0it as \u00a0something more monumental, which it *is.*<\/p>\n I feel like “Ways YA Authors Have Gotten \u00a0Rid of Parents Through the Ages” could be a great 50,000 word essay, and my brain felt really busy chewing this over while I tore through Thanks for the Trouble<\/em>. Tommy Wallach even \u00a0discussed<\/a> it in his recent fan-obsession\/confession piece about the movie \u00a0Labyrinth \u00a0(<\/em>“Then she disappears forever, as parents always must in fairy stories.”). Anne of GG and Harry Potter are orphans; Huck Finn is the son of a useless drunk; Katniss’s dad is gone; \u00a0John Green’s parental figures are benevolent softies \u00a0who only want the best for \u00a0their children, but are always powerless to help. In Thanks for the Trouble<\/em>, \u00a0Parker’s dad died in the same accident that caused his verbal disability, and his mother is struggling along in the aftermath. Zelda has outlived her parents by, oh, some hundreds of years. She’s kind of the perfect invention: a teen who is old enough to serve as the \u00a0spiritual guide in her own book.<\/p>\n If this sounds like it’s YOUR NUMBER, you should just read it, because I don’t want to spoil the ending, which, AMRGHH<\/a>, but also mmmghfff<\/a><\/em>. If you’re not yet sold, let me offer up a morsel \u00a0of Parker’s prose to tip you into running-out-and-getting-this-book territory:<\/p>\n *Her kind of language.<\/p>\n Have you discovered Tommy Wallach yet, and\/or are you a sucker for a light dash of the supernatural?<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Last year, there was a mini explosion of excitement for \u00a0We All Looked Up, Tommy Wallach’s novel about four \u00a0Seattle high schoolers \u00a0who wake up one day to a small green dot in the sky, continue reading<\/span>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/img.sparknotes.com\/content\/sparklife\/sparktalk\/tommywquote.jpg\")
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