Noggin

Il ne m’aura donc fallu qu’une grosse semaine pour lire les trois romans publiés par [a:John Corey Whaley|4113638|John Corey Whaley|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1303709143p2/4113638.jpg] jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Après l’excellent [b:Highly Illogical Behavior|26109391|Highly Illogical Behavior|John Corey Whaley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1447262135s/26109391.jpg|46054780] et l’étrange mais réussi [b:Where Things Come Back|8563789|Where Things Come Back|John Corey Whaley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1330581469s/8563789.jpg|13432259], j’ai lu cette fois Noggin, un roman au synopsis un peu déroutant au premier abord :

Listen — Travis Coates was alive once and then he wasn’t.
Now he’s alive again.
Simple as that.

The in between part is still a little fuzzy, but Travis can tell you that, at some point or another, his head got chopped off and shoved into a freezer in Denver, Colorado. Five years later, it was reattached to some other guy’s body, and well, here he is. Despite all logic, he’s still sixteen, but everything and everyone around him has changed. That includes his bedroom, his parents, his best friend, and his girlfriend. Or maybe she’s not his girlfriend anymore? That’s a bit fuzzy too.

Looks like if the new Travis and the old Travis are ever going to find a way to exist together, there are going to be a few more scars.

Oh well, you only live twice.

On parle donc ici d’un adolescent de seize ans, Travis, qui était condamné par un cancer il y a cinq ans et qui a choisi la cryonisation de son cerveau pour essayer d’échapper à la mort. Cinq ans plus tard, la procédure a miraculeusement réussi et Travis se réveille, sa tête attachée au corps d’un autre adolescent mort récemment. L’idée de départ de ce roman est très étrange, et j’avais clairement peur que le livre se transforme en long délire morbide.

En fait, c’est tout le contraire. L’idée de départ n’est qu’un prétexte pour raconter une belle histoire. Travis est parti puis revenu, mais la vie de ses proches a évolué en cinq ans : ses amis ont grandi et ont quitté le lycée, sa petite amie Cate est désormais fiancée, son meilleur ami Kyle qui venait de lui faire son coming-out juste avant sa « mort » est en couple avec une fille, et ses parents semblent l’avoir attendu patiemment pendant cinq ans, même s’ils ont complètement vidé sa chambre. Travis doit retrouver sa place dans tout cela, et ce n’est clairement pas aussi facile qu’il l’aurait pensé.

I was a quiet kid who would blush easily when he got too much attention and always walked with his head down and his hands in his pockets. Usually I was sitting in class thinking about something funny to say and never being brave enough to speak up and say it. In my mind I pretended I was too mature and intelligent to clown around with my classmates, but even I knew that wasn’t totally the case. I just wasn’t quite sure how to be one of them.

Il est assez difficile de parler de ce roman sans en dire trop. Il s’y passe finalement peu de choses mais c’est joliment écrit et plaisant du début à la fin. C’est d’abord une jolie ode à la vie mais c’est aussi un beau récit sur la mort, le deuil des amis et de la famille. Il y a quelques beaux passages dans le texte, et des scènes très touchantes dont je ne dévoilerai rien ici pour laisser le plaisir de la découverte aux futurs lecteurs.

It made me realize that no matter how often you see or talk to someone, no matter how much you know them or don’t know them, you always fill up some space in their lives that can’t ever be replaced the right way again once you leave it.

Noggin est un roman que je vous recommande chaudement, c’est une jolie lecture, un peu naïve par moments, avec beaucoup de beaux sentiments qui peuvent déplaire parfois, mais le récit est plaisant et les personnages sont attachants. J’étais peut-être dans le bon état d’esprit pour plonger dans ce livre, mais j’en ressors ravi.

They kept on like that for a while, and we laughed and told jokes and made fun of one another. But that’s why they were there, I guess. Even though I was almost gone, they were still there to remind me that I wasn’t quite dead yet. And to be honest, I wouldn’t have minded just closing my eyes right then and letting go. Wouldn’t that be perfect? Just dying right there with your two best friends helping you remember everything you loved about being alive?

And that’s how, five days before having my head sawed off my body and carefully placed in a cryogenic freezer in the basement of the Saranson Center for Life Preservation, I got to have the best day of my life. Isn’t that something? Isn’t that the greatest thing you’ve ever heard? I bet most people don’t even get one person who cares about them that much. And me, I got four of them.

Yeah, maybe I got a bad deal the first time around. Sure, it wasn’t fair to be dead at sixteen. But you know what? At least I got to live every single second before they finally turned off the lights.

Originally published over at Full of Words.

I wanted to like Noggin more than I did. It has a clever premise, it’s definitely funny, and it delivers on more than one genuinely touching moment. Unfortunately, despite everything the book does right, I just wanted to wring the main character’s neck after a certain point. During one scene late in the book I actually grimaced in horror at his stupidity.

Travis Coates starts out with a lot of sympathetic qualities. Noggin opens as he awakens from a surgery to attach his severed head to a donor body. In his former life, Travis was a sixteen-year-old kid with inoperable cancer. When it became clear that he was going to die, he volunteered for an experimental program with a chance to save his life.

The program worked, but that catch is this: five years passed while his head was cryogenically frozen. He’s still mentally sixteen, but his friends are in college and his parents lived with the grief of his loss for years.

That mental age ends up being Travis’ biggest obstacle. Everyone else has grown up and moved on, but he’s still petulant and selfish and unwilling to let go of the past. When he discovers that his best friend and girlfriend didn’t wait around for him to come back, he proceeds to blow up their lives and friendships with his behavior.

Travis spends most of Noggin trying to win back the love of his former girlfriend, Cate, who is now five years older than him and engaged to another guy. It’s obvious from the start that Travis’ quest is a huge mistake. He’s going to fail, and when he does, he’s going to ruin his relationship with someone he claims to love.

There’s probably a way to tell this story that would make it feel like Travis and Cate are star-crossed lovers, but I never found myself sympathizing with his wish to win her back. He just seemed like a pathetic asshole. His self-delusion lasts for so long and goes to such extremes that I lost all patience for his idiocy.

Travis is exactly the sort of “nice guy” who just won’t take a hint, and the Cate is so forgiving that she just keeps giving him the benefit of the doubt. When Travis makes a completely boneheaded “grand gesture” near the end of the book, Cate actually forgives him… and then a few chapters later he ignores her feelings yet again. I groaned aloud.

Honestly, I’m not sure I believe that Travis learns anything over the course of the book. Instead, it feels like he just decides to blame everyone else for not understanding what he’s going through.

Although I might be willing to give John Corey Whaley’s books another chance, I’m glad I’m done spending time with Travis Coates.