Lindsey's Library

Critique

It’s difficult to imagine anything but the bland coming out of Middle America, but Tharpe masterfully creates the alluring out of the seemingly mundane. Books like this, where teens are drawn into a world of partying almost to the degree of fantastical living is something that often comes from coming of age stories in New York or the West Coast. However, just as the book title shows, it’s the person, not the place that can create the spectacular now.

Sutter is a deep and engaging character whose motivation never betrays his character or the situations he find himself in. The writing is striking in a way that’s unique to the place and the voice of Sutter, the narrator: “Heroic weeds rise up from the cracks in the sidewalk, and the colored lights of the Hawaiian Breeze ignite the broken glass in the gutter.” Sutter is juxtaposed with other characters who are more typically the savior type, but in the end it is he—the crazy partier, the social thriller who will more than likely amount to little outside of college or high school, as Sutter puts it “God’s own drunk,” the person who becomes the outcast and dreg within normal society—who brings salvation to all of the people around him. He gives people a hope and a future, a modern representation of a Christ-like figure.

Given the nature of a high school teenager who lives in the spectacular now, there is rampant alcohol and drug use throughout the novel as well as somewhat explicit sex scenes. As such, the readers should be a little older. I recommend this book to readers 15+.