Benjamin Alire Sáenz’s YA novel Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of
the Universe is, simply, a beautiful book. It’s also a beautifully simple
book. YA Guy admires the heck out of writers who can express so much in such
straightforward, clean prose; I tend toward the baroque and the extravagant,
and I sometimes feel I say less with more.
But not Sáenz.
The story he
tells is classic coming-of-age material: two Mexican-American teenagers,
Aristotle (the brooding narrator) and Dante (his chatty best friend), learn
about life and love during several momentous summers, both together and apart.
Aristotle is dealing with lots of demons: a father who won’t talk about his
traumatic experience in Vietnam, an older brother who’s imprisoned and whom
the family never mentions, a near-deadly accident that turns him into a
reluctant hero. Dante seems to have things much easier: openly loving parents,
artistic talent, an easy manner of being around others. But Dante has his own painful
secret, and it’s one only Aristotle knows.
He’s gay.
I won’t tell you
all the twists and turns in the book; you’ll love discovering them for
yourself. And you’ll also love Sáenz’s
prose, which offers pearls like this on practically every page:
The problem with my life was it was someone
else’s idea.
Words were different when they lived inside
of you.
I sometimes think that I don’t let myself
know what I’m really thinking about.
Do you know what dead skin looks like when
they take off a cast? That was my life, all that dead skin.
For a few minutes I wished that Dante and I
lived in the universe of boys instead of the universe of almost-men.
I decided that maybe we left each other
alone too much. Leaving each other alone
was killing us.
I think my mother and father had decided
that there were too many secrets in the world.
If I have any
reservation about Aristotle and Dante
Discover the Secrets of the Universe, it has to do with the book’s
conclusion, which I felt moved too fast and provided too pat a resolution to
Aristotle’s crisis. But overall, if you’re looking for a book that explores the
painful process of growing to manhood, Aristotle
and Dante is one of the finest I’ve read in a long time.
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