Johanna Kelly's Book Review

Angry Management
(Three novellas)
by Chris Crutcher

Kyle Maynard and The Craggy Face Of The Moon
** stars
Montana Wild
**** stars
Meet Me At The Gates, Marcus James
***** stars

Mr. Nak, the therapists of all of the main characters and the one who runs the group "angry management" named it so because a boy who was in his group was uneducated and called it angry management instead of anger management. He commited suicide, and Mr Nak named the group in his honor.

Angus Bethune and Sarah Byrnes meet in an Angry Management group, and become friends on a journey to find Sarah’s mother. Sarah has full body burns. Angus has weight control issues; both of their names are synonymous with their conditions. This was too much for me. Sarah Byrnes is from Staying Fat For Sarah Byrnes, which was written in 1993. Angry Management was written last year. Crutcher brings a main character back from a book so old and keeps her the same age, adding new technology, and new ideas. He also adds in Angus, whose name is ridiculous. This was the first thing I’ve read from Crutcher that I didn’t like; I read four novels of his, not including this. I was going to give the book back, but I decided to not judge a collection of short stories by the first one, so I read on.

Montana West is a wild girl adopted by two conservative churchgoers. She wears all black, expresses freedom of speech a little too much, and has a strange tattoo. She is trying to get her school newspaper article about medical marijuana published, but once again, to no avail. She is trying to mentor her Tara, her family’s six year old foster daughter, even though her parents want to give her back. The Sledding Hill is where we are first introduced to Montana, where she holds a minor role. I liked that he moved a minor character to a major role instead of what he did for the previous story. The story gives a realistic look on censorship and other teenage issues. And of course, after I read this story I had to read the next.

You’re black and you’re gay in a town of hate. A pink noose is placed on your locker. What do you do? Marcus James wears it. He raises awareness to the whole school that hate is there. Some members of the administration want to sweep this under the rug, and act like this incident never happened. It did, and Mr. Simet wants to find who did it and wants to get them punished. Matt Miller knows who they are calls them out to the whole school. The boys who did it get kicked off of the football team. The End. Or so it should seem. Crutcher, once again, writes very well about serious topics. Meet Me At The Gates, Marcus James couldn’t have been written better.
Skip the first story, read the next two. Another great book (most of it) by Chris Crutcher! Read as much as you can, we get to meet him later this month!