Whirligig Book

Wow, I find all the mixed and/or negative reviews of this book shocking. I LOVED it. I thought it was beautifully written, poignant, and nearly impossible to put down.

Seventeen (or maybe 16) year old Brent has moved around a lot. He never feels comfortable anywhere. He's constantly trying to figure out the lay of the land -- what clothes are cool, who the cool kids are, how to create the perfect image. Brent is just starting to figure it all out at his new school when he goes to a party he's not strictly invited to, drinks a bit too much, and gets publicly humiliated by the girl he's had a crush on since moving. Mortified, Brent storms off and decides to commit suicide by crashing his car. Brent escapes with just cuts and a minor concussion, but the crash kills a 19 year old woman named Lea. Lea's mother asks Brent, as restitution, to travel the country and place 4 whirligigs in Lea's image in the corners of the country -- to pass on the joy that Lea would have brought to the world. Brent's journey is emotional as well as physical as he, bit by bit, comes to terms with taking another person's life.

This premise could easily come across as preachy or even silly, if not for Fleischman's beautiful writing. Details of Brent's journey are interspersed with four accounts of people encountering the whirligigs. The experience is moving for the reader without seeming intentionally tear-jerking or manipulative -- although I did cry for pretty much an entire chapter at one point.

"Brent observed travelers writing postcards, recalled that he'd brought some, and realized he had no one he wanted to send them to. He was a planet on which there was no other life yet."

"I pledge allegiance to Sarah Chang and all other Asian-Americans that I will be quiet, hardworking, and polite, succeeding in all things through dedication." A Korean character reciting the Pledge of Allegiance that's "only for people of Asian background."

"Somebody...I don't know who, said there shouldn't be laughing after Auschwitz. That nobody could ever want to laugh again after the things that happened there...But I was there, kindelah. Yes, very terrible. What I saw you should never dream. But I can also tell you that all those that died want that we should have a life with laughing. Not sad all the time, always reading books about Nazis and men who like killing. They want us to laugh all the laughs that were taken away from them."