Monday, January 15, 2018

Offspring, by Jonathan Strong



This 1995 short novel is by a favorite author of a friend of mine, who knows the writer through university connections.  I would like to say I found it as good as he evidently did, but I was not as impressed.  Linc and Izzy have been sweethearts since they were twelve and at age twenty moved in together.  One could call them hippies, for want of a better term, although they fetch up in a rather shabby but still suburban home with their three sons.  They have never bothered to get married, to the despair of their parents and siblings.  The eldest son, Obadiah, is approaching his teenage years and he and his close-in-age two brothers, Malachi and Zephaniah, are considered odd by their peers.  They are encouraged by their parents to read instead of participating in sports or getting interested in computers. They spend their after school hours in the basement, digging a tunnel.  Are they trying to escape, or just hide from the unfriendly world?  Or none of the above?  The school psychologist is worried.  Then a rash of vandalism hits their school and the boys come under suspicion.  Okay, but not great, and if you want to read it, you might have to borrow my friend’s copy since it is not widely available.  225 pp.

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