”One boy can be mischievous, but never underestimate the power of two or more.”- Natalie SnappSetting:Australia; 1999Cover Thoughts?:Well, on the one hand, this is indicative of the Wolfe brothers because they always seem to be plotting something. Then again, they probably wouldn’t be at it very long. The face is a bit too close for my taste. I’ve never been a fan of extreme close-upsPlot: ”Would I always live with this kind of self-doubt, and doubt for the civilization around me? Would I always be so small that it hurt and that even the greatest outcry roaring from my throat was, in reality, just a whimper? ” Meet Cameron and Ruben Wolfe. Here’s their life philosophy: And fuck shit up they do indeed. Try as they might to pull off that seemingly perfect robbery scheme or get rich quick idea, they just can’t seem to do it. They’re a constant embarrassment to their parents and much higher achieving older siblings, and they’re generally believed to be by most people complete and utter failures that’ll never make much of themselves later in life. ”We tried hard to listen to our mother because she was tough and she cleaned rich people’s houses for a living and she worked hard to let us have an okay house. We didn’t like it much when she was disappointed in us.”The one thing they do have going for them, however, is their unbreakable bond. Whether it’s their idea to rob the dentist or get back at the boyfriend that stole their sister’s heart, when one has an idea, the other is all for it. Their banter is like fireworks being set off; electric and magnetic. Characters: ”My name’s Cameron Wolfe.I live in the city.I go to school.I’m not popular with the girls.I have a little bit of sense.I don’t make much sense. I have thick, furry hair that isn’t long but always looks messy and always sticks up, no matter how hard I try keeping it down.”Cameron Wolfe is the quieter and more logical of the two (though not by much). He always wants to better himself so he can somehow make people proud of him, but try as he might he just gets sucked back into more craziness usually instigated by his older brother Ruben, ” My older brother Ruben gets me into plenty of trouble.”And that he does. From playing soccer in the backyard so loudly it gives the neighbor’s dog a heart attack, to boxing so hard that Social Services is called to see if they’re OK, Ruben is usually the creator of all these wild ideas they seem to find themselves embroiled in. He’s the more talkative and brash of the two, which makes him the natural leader in troublemaking schemes. Pros: I really REALLY enjoyed reading about Ruben and Cameron’s various failed attempts at adventures and mishaps. If you have any siblings, you may either be able to relate, or will thank the gods that you never had any siblings as crazy as these two. This is THEIR novel, and they steal the show fabulously. Cons: ”In the end, it’s like finding and old photo of yourself; you hope for as little embarrassment as possible.”The author wrote this in the preface for the bind up of these books. And while this isn’t a total embarrassment, you can tell this is a first attempt just by reading the book. While there are hints and traces of at Zusak’s later writing talent, it’s largely lost in this book. One thing that may frustrate readers is that there’s no plot at all. Not even a hint of one Instead, it almost seemed like it was a bunch of connected short stories all smushed together to make a novel, when it really should have been a short story collection. This may disappoint readers of this book, and it kind of irritated me at first before I could really get into it. Love Triangle?:Nope!Instalove?:Nope!A Little Romance?: ”I felt something and vowed that if I ever got a girl I would treat her right and never be bad or dirty to her or hurt her, ever. I vowed it and had all the confidence in the world that I would keep the vow.”Cameron and Ruben never get the girls. NEVER. They could bribe and beg and plead and slobber all over themselves, but they just don’t ever seem to capture the interest of the opposite sex. There isn’t any explicit romance in this book, but we do follow Cameron falling head over heels in love (or so he thinks), with a girl he meets while he’s doing some plumbing work at her house. Conclusion:While the book itself takes a little while to actually get into, you’ll quickly be sucked into the crazy shenanigan adventures that Ruben and Cameron Wolfe come up with. It may not be the perfect book with an almost nonexistent plot, but for a debut novel it was a solid (if shaky effort). It not only celebrates the mistakes we may make in our quest to grow up and make something of ourselves, most importantly, it celebrates the unsinkable, unbreakable bond between brothers who would do anything for each other. ”Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions poured up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn’t. I didn’t care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my own voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, of, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn’t lie down. ”
I imagine when Markus Zusak returned to his alma mater, Engadine High school as a beginning English Teacher, he found, as I did, that a core group of adolescent boys were very difficult to motivate. They would have not been moved by the literary works suggested to them, and the classics, books, and essays that featured feelings rather than action probably inspired only disruption. In 1999 you couldn't design an English curriculum based on TV, movies, websites and youtubeI I am pretty sure this was what motivated him into writing Young Adult fiction, directed at teenage boys, and apparently based on shared experiences of his brothers and their friends. From thence came first "underdog" and its two sequels. They are written at that level and aimed at those who see themselves disenfranchised from education and society, feeling hopeless, the perpetual underdogs. The language is simple, the emotions raw and primeval and the characters, based on my 40 year experience as a High School teacher, credible. I only found annoying his way of portraying his protagonist Cameron Wolf's speech as a kind of juvenile stream of consciousness. "How can I dream this now? Tonight? After what's been happening lately? I've gotta be kidding me. Is this a test?"This series has been highly successful overseas, much awarded and well reviewed. I am sure it may have have been the salvation of many an English teacher and helped some young males actually relate to writing. As such I commend it.However I didn't enjoy it and certainly wouldn't recommend it to other adult readers. The reason for the second is obvious - it's written for a specific audience and doesn't fit comfortably elsewhere. However, I wouldn't have enjoyed it at the age of Cameron or in Mark's class either! Maybe if he was able to spin a yarn in class like he did in the Book Thief he might have won me over. The reason for my disapproval actually gets to the great challenge of the English teacher in an class with more than one student. Books that appeal to boys the girls will mostly hate and vice versa. In my case I never felt an underdog and had been devouring 5 books a week since I got a library card. At the age of fifteen I was moving from Hemingway onto Steinbeck, not quite yet at my Russian phase! I am absolutely sure that I was an academic and literary snob but then the Cameron Wolf's that were to come into my life via my classoom would bring me down to earth eventually.
What do You think about Underdog (1999)?
Ordinarily, if someone said “Hey, would you like to spend a few days in the mind of a 15 year old boy?” I’d emphatically say: “No thanks,” or at a stretch, “Maybe, can I take hand sanitiser?”However, if someone said “Hey, would you like to spend a few days in the mind of a 15 year old boy via Markus Zusak?” I’d say: “Yes! Give it to me now!”No one actually said that, but have acquired all three books in Zusak’s Underdog series, and thus this week I spent some time in the mind of Cameron Wolfe: dirty boy.Okay, so no, this is not The Book Thief or even I Am The Messenger. This is the existential musing of a working class teenage boy who’s trying to figure who he is and his place in the world. It’s about brotherly backyard punch-ons and girls in the real world versus girls in catalogues. Having a winner for a brother and a mother who’s ashamed of her sons. Stealing traffic signs in the middle of the night. It’s a very subtle book – the plot is slender and it doesn’t exactly follow the traditional path of rising action to a tense climax. But there are hints of Zusak’s later style in the fragmented sentences, the fusing of Cameron’s dreams with his reality, and the flashes of imagery in the writing. And while the story appears to be somewhat insubstantial, I think its depth is implicit in the small moments of interaction between the characters, and Cameron’s struggle to express his thoughts with clarity.It’s interesting to read Zusak’s debut and see how his style evolved over time. The Underdog isn’t quite the Markus Zusak I’m familiar with, but the teenage male voice is very authentic and makes me curious about how much Zusak drew on his own experiences of growing up. It’s also very slice-of-Australian-life in the late nineties. There are more flannos, “carn”s and “y”s [that’s Australian for “youse”] than you shake a stick at. And loads of tomato sauce. Cameron Wolfe might a dirty boy, but I already have a bit of a soft spot for him. And Rube. Bring on the next one.
—Reynje
4.5 WOW! Empece a leer este libro sin esperar mucho, he leido varios reviews diciendo que no es muy bueno, quejandose de los personajes, del plot y de mil cosas por eso a mi me sorprendio lo mucho que me iba gustando y a medida que iba leyendo me gustaba mas, no es La Ladrona de Libros no, pero si se nota que es del mismo autor, que manera de escribir la de Markus Zusak, tiene una manera de contar las historias unica. He leido mil veces la pregunta 'Con que personaje ficticio te identificas?' y siempre me quedo pensando y no llego a nada, bueno despues de leer Underdog eso cambio, aunque sea raro me identifique mucho con Cameron Wolfe. Me gusto el protagonista y la historia me llego no se, Markus es un pedazo de escritor! Mis respetos.
—Eliana Olivera
Yeah, it may not be even close to THE BOOK THIEF or I AM THE MESSENGER but it was written long before those books so stfu. It was amazing book (too short but whatever) with two amazing characters- Ruben Wolfe and Cameron Wolfe. They didn't want a lot, Cameron just wanted someone to love him and Ruben... well he just wanted a beard... Cameron was confused and alone, tho he was ready to do everything for his ex-best friend and for his family. I really liked the relationship between the two brothers and I will definitely read the rest of the series. Content warning: Typical adolescent boy type content, some mild language, some mild violence, and a brief scene dealing with a teenage boy looking at the models in a lingerie catalog. “I had to decide what I was going to do, and what I was going to be.I was standing there, waiting for someone to do something , till I realised the person I was waiting for was myself.” “Very suddenly. Yes, quite suddenly, I didn't feel like I could handle my feeling of aloneness.” “He’s fighting the world.” And now, I watch as the underdog in the middle of the circle fights on and stands and falls and returns to his haunches and feet and fights on again. He fights on, no matter how hard he hits the ground. He gets up. Some people cheer him. Others laugh now and rubbish him.Feeling comes out of me.I watch.My eyes swell, and burn.“Can he win?”I ask it, and now, I too cannot take my eyes off the boy in the circle.”
—~Dark~Nemesis~
