Play Me Backwards

Gr 10 Up—Having Satan for a best friend doesn't mean you get everything you want, but for Leon, it is enough. Leon is content to work a dead-end job at a second-rate ice-cream parlor, get high, think about sex, and make no plans for the future. His buddy Satan is actually Stan, a kid who self-identified as the Prince of Darkness when he was nine and uses his powers to stir up trouble. When Leon hears that his ex-girlfriend, Anna, who he has been dreaming of for years, is returning from London, the idea of living the life of a loser has much less appeal. Inexplicably, Stan assigns Leon to listen to the unabridged audiobook of Moby Dick, which he does by driving around Iowa aimlessly. On one of these excursions, Leon meets Paige, a popular girl, and they begin dating. Stan assigns them to search for a rare Slushee flavor, which gives them something to do together, but these random assignments are often forgotten until the story needs somewhere to go, giving it an unpolished feeling. Selzer is full of outstanding similies and hilarity and his teen boy characters are crude and disgusting, but also extremely vulnerable. A main theme in Leon's life is his performance anxiety. A couple of bad sexual experiences have left him feeling inadequate and petrified, but his relationship with Paige provides the opportunity for them both to discover the fun in relationships and sex. By the end of the book, they have broken up, Leon has grown up a little, and when Anna returns, he is ready to meet her again. Leon is a likable narrator full of real-world worries and flaws, but the storytelling can be stilted and the point, at times, hard to find.—Heather Acerro, Rochester Public Library, MN