“Godless” by Pete Hautman
A selection for one of my book groups, Godless by Pete Hautman is a re-read. It’s told in first-person from the point of Jason during the summer before his junior year in high school. His parents are forcing him to attend a Catholic teen group. Jason’s not sure he’s atheist or agnostic, but he knows he’s not Catholic. A chance encounter with a troubled kid from school gives him the germ of what becomes a dangerous idea: why not make anything a god, even the town water tower? As Jason and his friends invent a religion, they get in a great deal of trouble with grown ups (much of it deserved) and Hautman gets to ruminate, via Jason, on the difficulty of not just believing what everybody else believes, or what ANYbody else believes.
I was reminded of that afterschool special, The Wave, from my childhood, as well as the Catholic storyline in King Dork, a book which also mixed dark and funny to excellent effect.
June 17th, 2012 at 3:27 pm
i read this last summer and i was irked by the main character - he was full of misplaced anger, bitter over the smallest of insults, and self centered to the point of endangering others. in short, a typical teenager
so it’s probably a victory for the author’s writing ability that i loathed him so much - after all i should (and did) relate more to the adult/parent characters in the book.