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Book Reviewed by:The Perks of Being a Wallflower meets Revenge of the Nerds in this tale of a teen misfit who seeks to take down the bro next door, but ends up falling for his enemy's sister and uncovering difficult truths about his family in the process.
Tom Grendel lives a quiet life - writing in his notebooks, mowing lawns for his elderly neighbors, and pining for Willow, a girl next door who rejects the "manic-pixie-dream" label. But when Willow's brother, Rex (the bro-iest bro ever to don a jockstrap), starts throwing wild parties, the idyllic senior citizens' community where they live is transformed into a war zone. Tom is rightfully pissed - his dad is an Iraq vet, and the noise from the parties triggers his PTSD - so he comes up with a plan to end the parties for good. But of course, it's not that simple.
One retaliation leads to another, and things quickly escalate out of control, driving Tom and Willow apart, even as the parties continue unabated. Add to that an angsty existential crisis born of selectively reading his sister's Philosophy 101 coursework, a botched break-in at an artisanal pig farm, and ten years of unresolved baggage stemming from his mother's death ... and the question isn't so much whether Tom Grendel will win the day and get the girl, but whether he'll survive intact.
The fact that this all takes place in a few short weeks in July makes Grendel's Guide to Love and War the perfect summer novel. It is fun and funny, lighthearted, but not without gravitas. And at its heart, it's still the familiar old story of a hero battling evil. It's been good enough for more than 1,000 years; there's no reason it can't keep working now...continued
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(Reviewed by Matt Grant).
Grendel's Guide to Love and War is a contemporary retelling of the epic poem Beowulf. In the author's note at the end of the novel, A.E. Kaplan says that when she first read Beowulf, she remembers feeling sorry for Grendel. "The poor fellow is minding his own business, living in his lake with his mother, when Hrothgar and company show up and ruin the neighborhood. He's stuck with these inconsiderate bastards who keep him up all night with their drunken carousing until one evening, thoroughly fed up, he arrives at one of their parties slavering with rage and eats everyone." In Grendel's Guide to Love and War, Tom Grendel is a 17-year-old who mows neighborhood lawns, and who must defend his quiet neighborhood from a group of hard-partying ...
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