H: A NovelH is for Elliot. Elliot is twelve-year-old Benjamin Sherman's best friend. To the counselors at the camp where he is spending his first summer, Benjamin is a "freaky kid" who shuns his peers and is strangely - and perhaps dangerously - attached to Elliot, his stuffed letter H. To his mother, Benjamin is an object of anxiety and pity. To his father, he's bizarre and embarrassing. To his psychiatrist, he is a case study in mental illness. Benjamin has a ritual and reason for everything, from the way he makes pizza bagels to his first kiss to his communion with the toy that the grownups all around him are so intent on taking away. And if those rituals are in any way disturbed, the outcome may not be Benjamin's "recovery" - it may be his destruction. Through the letters of Benjamin's mother and father, his sister, Lemon, his camp counselors and psychiatrist - and most touchingly through those Benjamin himself writes to his stuffed confidant, Elliot - this audacious and utterly unsentimental novel gives us a moving and sometimes shocking intimacy with a child whose disorder may be a kind of fragile genius. H is compelling, disturbing, and truthful in a single breath - a riveting look at what is irrevocably lost as Benjamin becomes "more normal". |
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able activities alot Amelia anymore asked August buried treasure busy cabin camp can't ceramics child Chris concerns counselors crying Daddy Dave Dear Benjamin dear Elliot death Desk of Peggy don't drama Dysan Eddie Murphy Elliottown Evelyn feel girls Hampshire hand Hannah hard Harold and Lucy hope INVISIBLE ELLIOT Jeffrey keep kids kind kisses lake laughing leave LEMON letter light look Lucy Reston mean medicine meet miss Mommy Mountain moving mutherfucker never nice night Onianta parents peanut butter Peggy Sherman pizza bagels play pretty reunion Road seems sick sleep softball sometimes soon sorry Star stay stop stuff summer sure swimming talk tell Thank things thought tired told understand wait watch week wish wonderful write York