Book Review: You Don't Know Me
Rated by 2 members
What Parents Should Know
If your teens are willing to discuss it at all, you could
talk about how John could have gotten out of his dilemma, and
how his problems affect his view of the world.
Common Sense Media Review
This is a stunning combination of brilliantly sardonic teen
observation, lyrical writing, and anger. Like teen protagonists
before him, all the way back to Holden Caulfield, John notices
above all the falseness and hypocrisy around him, but his
descriptions of each moment, ruthlessly parsed, are uniquely
creative, at times almost surrealistic. "My tuba is not
actually a tuba, because it has never produced a musical sound.
It is actually a giant frog pretending to be a tuba, and it
gives a loud croak that causes Mr. Steenwilly to jerk his head
around so fast he nearly gets whiplash."
Some of the scenes are laugh-out-loud funny, so the denoument comes as even more of a shock. John's problems may get a bit melodramatic at the end, but by then the reader is so immersed in his character that it is moving nonetheless. Sharply observed, and with a powerful voice, this is Klass's best novel yet.
From the Book:
You don't know me at all. You don't know the first thing
about me. You don't know where I'm writing this from. You don't
know what I look like. You have no power over me.
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