A review by octavia_cade
The Lost Boy by Dave Pelzer

3.0

I think one of the most interesting things about the edition that I read is the amount of end material - a number of short pieces from different people mentioned in the book. Foster parents, teachers, care workers... it's really valuable to get all these different perspectives, and hats off to all those people for doing what must often be an excruciatingly difficult job. And it's clear from reading Pelzer's story that he can't have been easy to deal with as a teenager. Not his fault, you can't expect a kid to recover from trauma at the flick of a switch, and after all he basically had to learn to perceive and navigate the world from scratch. But what struck me was the amount of repetition in the book. This can feel a little frustrating to read, and I can only imagine how much more frustrating it was for Pelzer and his support system to live through - a sort of two steps forward, one step backwards pattern that lasts throughout his adolescence. The tone's a little lighter in this volume, though, which is a relief. As bad as some of Pelzer's experiences are in this book, at least he's away from his awful fucking parents. How he can retain any sympathy or compassion for his awful, enabling father is a mystery to me, though.