going bovine

I had a little trouble at first getting into the story. Cameron quickly stereotyped just about everyone, including himself and then got rid of his parents (got them out of the picture) by noting their shortcomings. But then he pulled me in. Was this a true fantasy fiction story? Was this a story completely in his mind occurring as he lay in the hospital bed dying? It didn't matter. I was on adventure with Cameron. Cameron, the self-imposed loner, made friends, cared for his friends, fell in love as opposed to just getting laid, reconciled with his sister, and remembered back to times when he actually liked his parents and the things they did with him. I loved the anxiety ridden dwarf Gonzo and the stoic Balder imprisoned in a yard gnome. Cameron gets to actually live before he dies. "To live is to love, and to love is to live." As I was reading this book, I got word that my son's best friend's older brother's cancer came back. I was near the end of this book and as I finished I started to cry. How does a teenager live with a fatal disease? I remember in high school there was a rumor going around that some preacher had predicted the end of the world, to conveniently occur during my senior year. I knew it was just some crazy psycho religious extremist but I still started to think about all the things I had not done yet. Cameron got to do them. The pace of Cameron's adventure, the people encountered on his journey, the nod to homosexuality, the crazy CESSNAB cult, Mrs. Morae, the Bhudda Burger, Eubie, snow globes, etc. all intertwine like those weird dreams we all have where random people from different parts of your life appear and you have no idea why. I could visualize each character in this book except at times, Balder. I was still trying to picture what a live yard gnome would look like. I was a little taken back at first with the language and the drugs but then realized that this is nothing new, it's just as we age, most of us move towards the mainstream and what is acceptable behavior. We hope our own children are making the right choices but sometimes they don't or won't. Cameron got the chance to makes some right and wrong choices and to experience the outcome of those choices. We actually had to take a class in high school called "Death and Dying." I wonder if I would have remembered something about it if we had read and discussed a book like going bovine. I doubt the nuns would have even considered anything so modern!