What I’m Reading: Best Boy

I just finished up listening to the audio book Best Boy: A Novel by Eli Gottlieb.

I put this book on my reading hold list and waited and waited for it to come available.  I was so happy when I finally got a turn and listened contentedly.  It was a good book.  I highly recommend listening to this one as the reader, Bronson Pinchot, was a real joy to listen to.  The story is told from Todd Aaron’s voice and he is autistic.  The reader brings that through in his performance.  It adds so much to the story.

As I listened several times I thought I knew where the story would go but it didn’t go there.  At times I was surprised and almost wondered why the author didn’t take the story there.  In the end, it all turned out fine and I liked the book.

Here’s what Amazon had to say, “Sent to a “therapeutic community” for autism at the age of eleven, Todd Aaron, now in his fifties, is the “Old Fox” of Payton LivingCenter. A joyous man who rereads the encyclopedia compulsively, he is unnerved by the sudden arrivals of a menacing new staffer and a disruptive, brain-injured roommate. His equilibrium is further worsened by Martine, a one-eyed new resident who has romantic intentions and convinces him to go off his meds to feel “normal” again. Undone by these pressures, Todd attempts an escape to return “home” to his younger brother and to a childhood that now inhabits only his dreams. Written astonishingly in the first-person voice of an autistic, adult man, Best Boy―with its unforgettable portraits of Todd’s beloved mother, whose sweet voice still sings from the grave, and a staffer named Raykene, who says that Todd “reflects the beauty of His creation”―is a piercing, achingly funny, finally shattering novel no reader can ever forget.”

I really liked book and happily recommend it.  Amazon readers say 4.3 stars.  I’d agree.