The Porcupine of Truth

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Title:

The Porcupine of Truth

Author:

Bill Konigsberg

Subject:

Family

Juvenile Fiction

Multigenerational

Date:

2015-05-26

Digital Format:

HOOPLA E BOOK

Summary

Stonewall Book Award winner. "Konigsberg weaves together a masterful tale of uncovering the past, finding wisdom, and accepting others as well as oneself." -- School Library Journal (starred review) Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Children's/Young Adult A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection Carson Smith is resigned to spending his summer in Billings, Montana, helping his mom take care of his father, a dying alcoholic he doesn't really know. Then he meets Aisha Stinson, a beautiful girl who has run away from her difficult family, and discovers a secret regarding his grandfather, who disappeared without warning or explanation decades before. Together, Carson and Aisha embark on an epic road trip to try and save Carson's dad, restore his fragmented family, and discover the "Porcupine of Truth" in all of their lives. "Words like 'brilliant' are so overused when praising novels--so I won't use that word. I'll just think it." --Benjamin Alire Sáenz, author of Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe "Undeniably human and unforgettably wise, this book is a gift for us all." --Andrew Smith, author of Grasshopper Jungle "Konigsberg . . . crafts fascinating, multidimensional teen and adult characters. A friendship between a straight boy and a lesbian is relatively rare in YA fiction and is, accordingly, exceedingly welcome." -- Booklist (starred review) "The story tackles questions about religion, family, and intimacy with depth and grace . . . Equal parts funny and profound." -- Kirkus Reviews

Author Notes

Bill Konigsberg is the author of six books for young adults, which have won awards including the Stonewall Book Award, the Sid Fleischman Award for Humor, and the Lambda Literary Award. Bill lives with his husband, Chuck, and their two Labradoodles, Mabel and Buford. Please visit him online at billkonigsberg.com and @billkonigsberg.

Reviews (3)

School Library Journal Review

Gr 9 Up-Carson's mother thwarts his summer plans when she drags him from New York City to Montana. He wasn't especially looking forward to working at a frozen yogurt shop, but it couldn't be worse than staying with his ailing (and alcoholic) father, a man he hasn't seen in 14 years. Aisha Stinson has been sleeping at the Billings Zoo since coming out to her ultra-conservative father. After a chance meeting, Carson and Aisha recognize each other as kindred spirits. Aisha comes to stay with Carson's family, and the pair soon unearth family secrets in the basement. They set off on a roadtrip to uncover the root cause of three generations of estrangement. As they pursue a reconciliation with Carson's missing grandfather, both teens wrestle with their own strained family relationships. Konigsberg perfectly depicts the turbulent intensity of a new friendship. Carson is an intensely likable, hilarious, and flawed narrator. There are no true villains in the well-developed cast of characters, just people trying to do their best and frequently failing. VERDICT Konigsberg weaves together a masterful tale of uncovering the past, finding wisdom, and accepting others as well as oneself.-Tony Hirt, Hennepin County Library, MN (c) Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publisher's Weekly Review

Konigsberg (Openly Straight) eloquently explores matters of family, faith, and sexuality through the story of 17-year-old Carson Smith, whose therapist mother has dragged him from New York City to Billings, Mont., where his alcoholic father is dying. After Carson meets Aisha, whose conservative Christian father threw her out of the house when he discovered she is a lesbian, the teens embark on a multistate road trip, chasing down fragmentary clues that might lead them to find Carson's long-absent grandfather. Strained parent-child relationships are laced throughout this story-on top of Carson and Aisha's anger toward their respective fathers, Carson's mother only talks to him in detached therapyspeak ("I truly hear underneath the sarcasm that you're feeling pain, Carson"), and Carson's father hasn't put his own paternal abandonment behind him. Bouts of humor leaven the characters' intense anguish in a story that will leave readers thinking about inherited traits (whether an oddball sense of humor or a tendency to overdrink), the fuzzy lines between youth and adulthood, and the individual nature of faith. Ages 14-up. Agent: Jennifer De Chiara, Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency. (May) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Seventeen-year-old Carson has come from New York City to Billings, Montana, to spend the summer with his dying father, whom he hasn't seen in 14 years. Things are different in Billings. For one thing, it's quiet; for another, there are no animals in the Billings Zoo well, except for a depressed Siberian tiger with a look of existential despair in his eyes. However, all is not lost, for it is at the zoo that Carson meets Aisha and falls instantly in love. There's only one hitch: Aisha is a lesbian. Carson is disappointed, but, nevertheless, the two form an easy, bantering friendship, and together they set off in search of Carson's grandfather, who vanished when Carson's dad was a teenager. Their goal is to bring the dying man closure, but their quixotic search ends up testing their friendship. And the truth, when it emerges, may be as thorny as, well, a porcupine. Konigsberg (Openly Straight, 2013) employs a colorful style (a day is warm, like bread just out of the oven, and Carson's new room is like a remote bunker where people store their afterthoughts) and crafts fascinating, multidimensional teen and adult characters. A friendship between a straight boy and a lesbian is relatively rare in YA fiction and is, accordingly, exceedingly welcome. And that's the truth.--Cart, Michael Copyright 2015 Booklist

Excerpts

From THE PORCUPINE OF TRUTHAt our next stop on the zoo tour, we pass a sign that reads WOLF WOODS, and she puts her hands on the mesh enclosure. "There are four wolves left. There were many more at one time, but one of the wolves was a psychopath."I laugh, figuring she is making a joke. She doesn't laugh back. I catch sight of one of the wolves. He's white with steely eyes, and he's staring at me. "A psychopath?""Well, what would you call it? Wolves were showing up dead. Disemboweled. They couldn't figure out who had done it, so they brought in a wolf detective. She got right to solving the case. We only lost three more after that, and once she found the killer, they hung him."I look out at the area. A wolf detective! I'd never heard of that. And then I look back at her. "Wait. They hung a wolf?" She sucks her lips in, rolls her eyes up, and stares at the sky. "Too much?""You made that all up, didn't you?" I ask.She tilts her head. "I may have."We have stopped walking. "Cool," I say. "Is it?"I think: yeah. It's the kind of thing that the improv comedy group at my high school does. I joined this year, because of a girl, of course, and that didn't work out, of course. But I really like improv. "It's totally cool," I say. Excerpted from The Porcupine of Truth by Bill Konigsberg All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.