April 15, 2018
Sunny Lancaster is a home-schooled almost-13-year-old torn between duty to run and passion for dance in the latest compulsively readable installment of Reynolds' lauded Track series.On the surface, African-American Sunny appears to have a wealthy, comfortable life that his less-fortunate teammates on the Defenders cannot help but envy. Privilege, however, cannot hide pain, and Sunny feels smothered by guilt over his mother's death immediately after his birth and crushed beneath the weight of his father's expectations for him to become the marathon runner that his beloved mother no longer can be. Once again, Reynolds cements his reputation as a distinguished chronicler of the adolescent condition by presenting readers with a winsome-yet-complex character whose voice feels as fresh as it is distinctive, spontaneously breaking out into onomatopoeic riffs that underscore his sense of music and rhythm. Living in an empty house with colorless walls and unfulfilled familial expectations cannot dim the effervescent nature of a protagonist who names his diary to make it feel more personal, employs charts and graphs to help him find the bravery to forge his own path as a discus-throwing dancer, and finds artistic inspiration in the musical West Side Story. Defenders introduced in earlier novels receive scant treatment, but new characters, such as Sunny's blue-haired teacher/dance instructor, Aurelia, are vibrant and three-dimensional. Main characters' races are not explicitly mentioned, implying a black default.Another literary pacesetter that will leave Reynolds' readers wanting more. (Fiction. 10-14)
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July 1, 2018
As in Reynolds's two previous novels in the Track series (Ghost, rev. 11/16; Patina, rev. 11/17), sports aren't really the point here--certainly not for Sunny, the team's best miler, who decides, just as he's about to win a race, that he doesn't want to be a runner and, in fact, never did. Coach's subsequent suggestion that he take up the discus instead is cannily reflected in the novel's structure, a series of diary entries that each spin around another incident or memory, cumulatively revealing the tragic origins of Sunny's track career. The incantatory leanings of the prose sometimes tend toward repetitiveness, but the slow build of the story allows Sunny's strengths and vulnerabilities to gain him a place in our hearts. When he finally throws the discus in competition--on the last page, no less--we are completely with him. roger Sutton
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