Lunchmeat

Reviewer Note: I received a free copy of this book from the author in exchange for an honest review. I have not received any financial compensation in exchange for a review. This review may contain spoilers.

Lunchmeat tells the story of Victor Ferraro, a Jewish-Italian boy living in New Jersey, from 1997 to 2009, grades 1 through 12. Victor, Vito/Vic, is a young boy obsessed with stories about knights and chivalry, fascinated with a TV evangelist, and curious about everything. The book follows Victor as he navigates childhood, family, friends, and the very awful bully, Pierce Stone. His love of knights puts him on his own “holy” quest, the search for Hell. Along the way, Victor will learn about popularity, puberty, the opposite sex, drugs, and importance of family. The story reaches an explosive end that leaves the reader speculating about Victor's future downward spiral.

When the story opens, Victor is a young and innocent 6 year old, a first grader, who loves his older brother, Tony, and looks up to his best friend and neighbor Karl Geiger. Victor has a younger sister, Brittney, who is autistic and responds to life with Disney movie quotes and her best friend is a toy horse named Marlene. Victor's father works for the school district, but interestingly while we know his mother works, we do not know what her career is or where it is, all Victor says is that “they” don't know where his mom works. It is in Part One of the book that the reader first hears about Victor's search for Hell, a place he quests for the same way King Arthur's men quested for the Holy Grail. At one point, he thinks he has found Hell, but the place he and a group of boys venture to is merely a field near a parking lot. Part One closes with Victor surviving second grade, still enamored with knights and still searching for Hell. He joined other boys in competitive games of Pokémon and did his best to avoid his arch-nemesis, Pierce Stone.

In Parts Two and Three, Victor experiences the tragedy of September 11, 2001, goes through puberty, develops a growing curiosity and interest in girls, becomes a very good athlete, encounters drugs and alcohol, and continues his search for Hell. In Middle School, Victor has to make new friends, as his guide and protector Karl is attending a different school. In High School, Victor has to navigate the fears of an unplanned pregnancy and a relationship that rocks between loving and volatile on a fairly regular basis. It's while protecting his sister that he discovers what and where Hell is.

I have mixed feelings about this story. I really enjoyed Part One of the book. I found Victor to be very endearing and sweet, probably due to his naivete and curiosity. The bullying he suffers from Pierce Stone is awful, yet he never teases Pierce for wetting his pants when their group encounters a terrifying snake. Karl Geiger is a wonderful friend to Victor, he's the one who protects Victor from Pierce's teasing and bullying, and he's the one who patiently answers Victor's questions about life. Parts Two and Three were a little harder for me to get into. As Victor aged, I found my interest in him decreasing. I still found some of his more innocent moments, a few different scenes involving middle school girls and his confusion when agreeing to “date” these girls were humorous. His growing fascination with the TV evangelist was interesting and it helped to support his search for Hell. By the time Victor got to high school (Part Three), I had lost much of my interest in him and had almost forgotten about the search for Hell. The book ended very rapidly and I had to reread the last few pages to make sure I understood what happened.

I think this book was very well written and, while I did not enjoy all of it, that will not prevent me from reading more books by Ben D'Alessio. I did lose interest in the story the older the main character got, and by the end of the book, I just did not like him nor really care about him. The way the book ended bothered me to some degree; it was a very fast escalation from calm to murderous rage, but given the path Victor's life took, I was not surprised by his actions at the end. While I did not enjoy this book the further I got into it, I do like and appreciate the way the author told the story. He humanized his characters, they seemed like people you could encounter during the course of your own life, and that is what will bring me back to the author's other works.