‘Problem’ novels gaining favor ‘Racing the Past’ portrays boy who learns to transcend abuse

RACING THE PAST, by Sis Deans, Henry Holt and Co., New York, 2001, 151 pages, $15.95.

Sis Deans’s most recent book, “Racing the Past,” fits comfortably within a category that librarians see more and more of – the “problem novel.” In this case, it’s Ricky Gordon, Deans’s 11-year-old protagonist who has the problem, and young adult readers will see him struggle to avoid failure for not only himself, but for the rest of his family as well.

We’re introduced to Ricky, a fifth-grader, when he’s called to the principal’s office after a fight with the school bully, Bugsie. Ricky, we soon learn has a lot on his plate besides Bugsie and the principal’s threat to call his mother. To begin with, his father, an abusive drunk, died when his pickup truck hit a tree several months before the novel opens; in addition, his mother is struggling to pay bills, his younger brother wakes screaming every night, his aunt (whom he calls Aunt June the Loon) is mentally disturbed, and his two uncles are in Thomaston Prison. It’s little wonder that the Gordons have gotten the reputation of being the town’s losers and that Ricky feels the town “held his family against him.”

A Maine author, who won the Maine Chapbook Award in 1995, Deans doesn’t attempt to minimize the violence that Ricky has lived with; as the novel proceeds, he remembers many beatings administered to him, to his brother, to his mother. The fight with Bugsie, ironically, began with an insult that Ricky actually agreed with. “‘My father said the best thing your father ever did for your family was running his truck off Dead Man’s Curve.'” Defending the honor of his dead father, however, results in Ricky’s promise to the principal that he’ll stay out of Bugsie’s way for the rest of the school year – although it means giving up recesses and walking the three and a half miles home instead of riding the school bus.

The walks soon turn to jogs and then to runs, as Ricky tries to beat the bus home, and to avoid the taunting of the kids on the bus whenever they pass him. Eventually he learns to enjoy running and then to profit from it, winning not only the respect of his classmates, but also the interest of the high school coach and many of the townspeople.

Speed isn’t the only thing Ricky has going for him. He’s a math whiz, receiving special tutoring in school because of his love of numbers. He cares deeply for his younger brother, for his friend Lyle, for his sister and mother. He’s a hard worker, disciplined and mature, who perseveres even when no one seems to be noticing. He discovers in himself the characteristics he finds in a book describing runners like the one he’s becoming, “‘Long-distance runners are often solitary, quiet, and stoic. They have great stamina and resistance to pain.'” In short, he exhibits those qualities we’d most like to see in our own children.

And this is exactly the purpose of problem novels written for young adults: give a reader, aged 10 to 15, an admirable, likable character who may share many of the reader’s own problems. Even if most kids don’t have abusive drunks as parents, almost all know how it feels to be bullied, and certainly all know what it means to be ashamed – with or without reason – of their parents.

Deans’s accurate and sympathetic portrait of a troubled young adolescent and his equally troubled brother is mirrored by her portrait of a small Maine town. Although we’re not told exactly where Ricky Gordon lives, it’s the paradigm of 100 small towns we could think of, right down to the nicknames that have developed over time and the sense of everybody knowing everybody else’s business. She is accurate and sympathetic as well when she writes about the rural working class and the working poor.

There is, then, a great deal in “Racing the Past” to appeal to young adult readers; they should find a place they can easily visualize and characters with whom they can empathize – whether or not they share the characters’ problems. It’s easy to see why problem novels have proliferated and why teachers, librarians, and parents react so favorably to them. What is not clear, however, is whether the readers for whom they’re intended share that reaction.

According to several librarians with whom I’ve spoken, for example, the favorite books of the audience to whom “Racing the Past” is targeted are the Harry Potter books, the “Hobbitt” series, and “The Narnia Chronicles.” Aside from those perennial favorites, the big book this past year has been “The Bad Beginning,” another book by Lemony Snicket, whose novels are described by Amazon.com as being bleak but also “delightful, funny, linguistically playful.” Furthermore, the Maine Student Book Awards 2001-2 (awarded by students themselves) were about evenly divided between realistic novels in which young people deal with serious problems and novels in which fantasy, adventure, and mystery predominate.

But why should young adult literature be exempt from the same debate that has been ongoing in the world of adult literature – when we curl up with a book, do we want to confront life’s real and terrible problems or do we want to travel, for a short while, to lands where evil is fantastic and clearly momentary? More to the point, would Ricky Gordon himself prefer the former or the latter?