Les Maux D'Ambroise Bukowski (2000) - Plot & Excerpts
Ambrose is a quirky, Scrabble loving, 12 year-old, with a seriously over protective mother. He has a hard time making new friends because of frequent moves his disgruntled, tenure-chasing mother makes, from one disappointing, sessional teaching job to another. However, an unlikely companionship with an ex-con allows Ambrose to embrace his uniqueness and find some kindred spirits. Some funny adolescent boy humour moments break up some otherwise heavy content. A perfect middle school read. Word Nerd was cute. I write that word with much deliberation, as I believe the book deserves the connotation. Being cute is better than being ugly, but not as good as being beautiful. In other words, cute is slightly above average. Cute also implies that something is light, fluffy, and cannot be taken seriously. While the premise of Word Nerd had the potential (as all books with three stars seem to) to be a beautiful story, it fell short. Despite its unique ideas and well-written style, the book failed to amaze me. The one quality of Word Nerd that made me keep reading was the witty, clever humour. Some parts made me laugh out loud, which I always love in a book. However, certain aspects of this book made me want to give it up. Not only was the plotline predictable, but the characters were flat throughout. I suppose Irene (Ambrose’s mother) and Cosmo changed substantially, but Ambrose only changed a bit. Others might disagree with me on that, but I didn’t notice any huge character change. On that note, what was up with his constant word scrambling? The scrambling of every chapter was bad enough, but Ambrose started doing it with random words. At first, I thought it was cool. Then, I supposed it was a symbolic motif. Finally, I realized that the author was doing that for absolutely no point other than to show how annoying her main character was. I recommend Word Nerd to anybody who likes words but also easy-to-read books, enjoys a mixture of romance and bromance (not with the same people), or just want a quick, noncommittal read. My thanks go to Ms. Green for buying this book for the library!
What do You think about Les Maux D'Ambroise Bukowski (2000)?
I absolutely adored this book and it's characters!
—Tarryb
