So now I have finished one book while home sick this week. The Death of Jayson Porter is just…excellent. This novel in verse is the story of sixteen-year-old Jayson, who contemplates suicide on a daily basis because of the horrors of his everyday life. His white mother beats him senseless regularly, runs off with strange men, drinks heavily, and can’t hold down a job. His black father is a junkie living in an even more dangerous part of Jayson’s florida town than he does. Jayson buses to a private school in a nearby town, paid for by a mysterious benefactor whose true identity brings some of the biggest heartbreak and hope in the book. Jayson dreams of jumping from the balcony in front of his 18th floor apartment-his death, he feels, is something he can control. The title of the book is not misleading, but it’s also not quite the death one would imagine.
Archive: August 1, 2008