Cover Image

Invisible

by Hautman, Pete, 1952-

Format: Print Book 2006
Availability: Available at 1 Library 1 of 1 copy

Available (1)
Location Collection Call #
Penn Hills Library Fiction HAU
Location  Penn Hills Library
 
Collection  Fiction
 
Call Number  HAU
 
 

Summary
You could say that my railroad, the Madham Line, is almost the most important thing in my life. Next to Andy Morrow, my best friend.

Lots of people think Doug Hanson is a freak -- he gets beat up after school, and the girl of his dreams calls him a worm. Doug's only refuge is creating an elaborate bridge for the model railroad in his basement and hanging out with his best friend, Andy Morrow, a popular football star who could date any girl in school. Doug and Andy talk about everything -- except what happened at the Tuttle place a few years back.

It does not matter to Andy that we live in completely different realities. I'm Andy's best friend. It does not matter to Andy that we hardly ever actually do anything together.

As Doug retreats deeper and deeper into his own reality, long-buried secrets threaten to destroy both Doug and Andy -- and everything else in Doug's fragile world.
Published Reviews
Booklist Review: "Gr. 7-10. It's hard to tell if Hautman meant this to be a mystery, but it's clear from the start that there's something not right about the relationship between narrator Doug Hanson and his best friend, Andy Morrow. Doug, a self-proclaimed nerd, is primarily interested in building a matchstick replica of the Golden Gate Bridge for his model railway town. Andy is popular, a football player and actor. But the boys live next door to each other and talk from their bedroom windows at night. In an almost robotic voice that still manages to be intensely insightful, Doug takes readers to his school, where he is mocked and eventually beaten, and to his neighborhood, where he turns into a Peeping Tom, watching school star Melanie Haver undress. Hautman does a superb job of crafting the odd sanctuary that is Doug's mind. But Doug's defenses are crumbling, and the secret he's been keeping about Andy is oozing through the cracks. The truth about Andy won't come as a surprise, but there are some unexpected plot turns here, and the chilling but ambiguous denouement is definitely unsettling. --Ilene Cooper Copyright 2005 Booklist"
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Publisher's Weekly Review: "The strength of Hautman's (Godless) painfully sad novel is the wisecracking but clearly unreliable voice of its narrator, 17-year-old Douglas MacArthur Hanson who admits, "I'm not only disturbed, I'm obsessed." One of his passions is "Madham," a town he's building for his model railroad, complete with a 1:800 scale replica of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's also fixated on a pretty girl who clearly wants nothing to do with him. And he's overly reliant on his only friend, Andy Morrow, a fellow junior who is the popular and outgoing yang to Dougie's outcast and introverted yin. Hautman expertly teases out the truth about a tragic incident that occurred "at the Tuttle place" three years earlier, a mystery that propels the story to its horrific conclusion. Dougie is as mathematically gifted and socially inept as the autistic narrator of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but he also has a sophisticated wit. During a lapse in conversation at one of his $95-an-hour therapy sessions, he observes, "We stare at each other for about $1.40." His self-deprecating comments and wry observations make his spiral into self-destruction all the more heartbreaking. (One measure of how sympathetically the author has portrayed him is that even though he stalks a classmate, you root for him to get away with it.) Hautman once again proves his keen ability for characterization and for building suspense. Ages 12-up. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved"
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Additional Information
Subjects Best friends -- Juvenile fiction.
Friendship -- Juvenile fiction.
Railroads -- Models -- Juvenile fiction.
Models and modelmaking -- Juvenile fiction.
Schools -- Juvenile fiction.
Mental illness -- Juvenile fiction.
Best friends -- Fiction.
Friendship -- Fiction.
Railroads -- Models -- Fiction.
Models and modelmaking -- Fiction.
Schools -- Fiction.
Mental illness -- Fiction.
Publisher New York :Simon Pulse,2006
Edition 1st Simon Pulse ed.
Language English
Description 149 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm
ISBN 9780689869037 (pbk.)
0689869037 (pbk.)
9781428708143 (BWI bdg.)
1428708146 (BWI bdg.)
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