Happy Hump Day, everyone, and happy Halloween! I hope everyone is enjoying their week so far. If not, just remember: you’re already halfway done with it. I’m personally having a great time vacationing at my favorite place on Earth, Disneyland! However, I still wanted to take the time to bring a new back to you by one of the authors I have reviewed on here before, Jim Lindsay. The subject of today’s review is Swerve: The Little Bastards 2, sequel to Jim Lindsay’s The Little Bastards.
In Swerve: The Little Bastards 2, The Little Bastards are back and growing up. They’ve traded in bicycles for hot rods, high school for college, summer jobs for full-time work, and casual dating for serious relationships filled with love and talks about their future. As their lives take them down their separate paths, Sonny and his friends both relive the glory days and roll with the punches, making the best of the bittersweet lemons the world throws at them. After all, the only thing in life that’s guaranteed is change.
Jim Lindsay starts Swerve right where The Little Bastards left off: Sonny Mitchell has saved a drunk driver and his passengers from a brutal death on the train tracks. One of these passengers is the lovely Marylyn, and romance between her and Sonny seems inevitable, but life never lets things go exactly as planned. When Marylyn’s father, the rich banker J.R. Swanson, catches onto the mutual attraction between his daughter and the boy from “the wrong side of the tracks,” he puts an end to the relationship before it can even begin. This rebellious and lovesick young man realizes that, for once in his life, no amount of risk-taking or rule-breaking will get him what he wants this time, and he must trudge forward as though nothing has happened. As life goes on, so must the heartbroken Sonny. Yet even through his daily routine, car repairs, catastrophic street racing, and a damaging financial mystery at the mill, Sonny can’t help but wonder: what will it take to change the banker’s opinion of this Little Bastard?
Lindsay does not disappoint with this sequel to his classic coming-of-age novel. He has preserved the engaging, colloquial tone of the first novel while still allowing the narrator to age, a feat which can be difficult when writing a sequel in first-person narration. Of course, this preservation means that there are some phrases which modern readers might not understand. However, these phrases are essential to taking the reader back to this time period and are easy enough to look up if there is any confusion. More importantly, the voice is uniquely Sonny Mitchell. He is no longer the boy-turned-teenager from the majority of the first novel, but he is still the smartass, rebellious, and kind-hearted Little Bastard that readers fell in love with. Sonny’s storytelling is what kept my attention most and drew me back to the book even when I had a mile-long list of work to get done.
While the unique and historically-accurate voice is my favorite part of the book, a close second has to be how Lindsay handles the romance in Swerve. Marylyn is often on Sonny’s mind, slipping back in at the most inconvenient moments and causing him reevaluate every aspect of his life. However, the romance is not the focus of the novel. Rather, it is one of many elements which make up the true focus of Swerve: Sonny’s adolescence and young adulthood. We see him grow up and have many of his firsts; we watch as his emotions mature, as he struggles with fears and insecurities, and as he grows into the man he was meant to be; we witness him and his friends move beyond their “Little Bastards” phase and prove that moving on does not have to mean drifting apart. Sonny is able to care about a young woman without losing himself to empty-headed romanticism, a portrayal that I think even adults can learn from.
Sometimes this wide spectrum of growing-up stories causes the book to lose its thread. Some of these stories, while they fit where Lindsay has written them, led me away from the main plot to the point that I would forget about it until I reached the end of that particular mini-story. Oddly, though, I did not mind getting sidetracked like that in Swerve. I would become so wrapped up in the events and Sonny’s storytelling that I usually did not notice that the thread had been lost until I found it again. Furthermore, Lindsay always ties the flashbacks to the narrative present eventually and everything resolves fairly well by the end of the novel, so even if the plot swerves every now and then, it does not detract from the overall quality.
I feel I should warn my readers that there are several heart-wrenching moments in Swerve. Because it involves a major event from the first book, I cannot go into too many details here. However, I can say that Lindsay does well in portraying the effects of a tragic event from the first novel in this second novel. He shows how it has stuck with the characters, changed them—for better or worse—and how it influences their decisions. I could feel their sadness and loss but also the glimmer of hope and determination, the hope that things will get better and the determination to never let that tragic event repeat itself. When an author can make me tear up at the mere memory of a character’s loss, I know his/her writing is powerful.
Overall, Swerve: The Little Bastards 2 by Jim Lindsay exceeded my expectations. It is exemplary both as a coming-of-age story and as historical and literary fiction. The characters are just as well-rounded as in the first novel, and the emotional connections between them and the reader have not faded. The mini-stories could have presented a more united front, but I think something would have been lost from the realistic, colloquial feel of Sonny’s voice if the thread had carried entirely intact throughout the whole book. If you like coming-of-age stories and historical fiction with a splash of literary fiction, action, and mystery, you’ll definitely want to give Lindsay’s work a try. Just remember to read the first book before this one—you’ll find they’re both better that way and that it’s certainly worth your time!
You can buy a physical copy of Swerve: The Little Bastards 2 by Jim Lindsay on Amazon.
Do you know of any books I should read? E-mail me at thewritersscrapbin@gmail.com and let me know!
Designed by Stephanie Hoogstad circa 2011