Book Review- Adios, Nirvana.

Paperback, 240 pages

Published January 10th 2012 by Graphia (first published October 25th 2010)

ISBN

0547577257 (ISBN13: 9780547577258)

edition language

English

literary awards

YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults (2011)

 

When you piss off a bridge into a snowstorm, it feels like you’re connecting with eternal things. Paying homage to something or someone. But who? The Druids? Walt Whitman? No, I pay homage to one person only, my brother, my twin.
       In life. In death.       Telemachus. Since the death of his brother, Jonathan’s been losing his grip on reality. Last year’s Best Young Poet and gifted guitarist is now Taft High School’s resident tortured artist, when he bothers to show up. He's on track to repeat eleventh grade, but his English teacher, his principal, and his crew of Thicks (who refuse to be seniors without him) won’t sit back and let him fail.

***

 

'Maybe we don't need to hit the duck. Maybe all we need to do is say what we must say once, to another human being, openly and honestly, with humility and remorse. Maybe that is enough.'

Jonathan hasn't lived since long, from the day Telly left him alone. He's been burying it down and let it surface when it goes dark. 'Adios, Nirvana' is Jonathan's journey to self-discovery. The protagonist underestimates himself. The loss of his twin brother has taken a toll on him. The guy who used to be one of the brightest chaps at Taft’s High School, now struggles to get promoted to the twelfth grade. What follows are the collective efforts of his English teacher, his Principal and his Crew of Thick’s efforts to let him not fall apart.

Jonathan’s English teacher, who is afraid that Jonathan’s talent might end up being nowhere, provides him with a challenge of writing the biography of an old, ailing sailor. Nausea sickens him and yet he is compelled to do it. As it turns out, this old man is the one who rescues him, convinces him to leave darkness behind and force himself to swim towards the shimmer.

 Encompassing a span of a year, the novel is a potpourri of approximately every emotion that not simply a teen undergoes, but all of us do in general, irrespective of which age group we fall into. Ofcourse not every one of us has a twin whom we spell as life, but emotions don’t really change with the person depending on the relationship we have with them, or do they? 

Jonathan is a sensitive guy, really emotional. I love how his thoughts flow, sometimes rhythmic like a poem, like a melody and sometimes all over the place. I understand why he walks up on the bridge. I understand why he drops the idea. I understand when he makes little scribbles on his little diary. It’s not just me. It’s each and everyone of us who’d understand, for he’d have been reading his story. Conrad Wesselhoeft, the author does a commendable job with portraying the protagonist’s state of mind. Everyone and everything really meld very well together.

Although there are no negatives but I’d still give it a 4 on 5, for I wish Jonathan’s thoughts covered a larger portion of the literature in the book.