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A review by aleffert
The Instructions by Adam Levin
4.0
When you're in middle school, the most important thing in the world is middle school. What your friends think about you, what the teachers are doing, who likes who. Imagine taking that biblically seriously. Imagine taking that biblically seriously over the course of a thousand page scripture you wrote because you're a former Jewish day school kid who got in too much trouble and ended up at a school program for troubled kids and now you are writing your story for your disciples because you think you are possibly the messiah, which is the premise of this novel. And with a name like Gurion ben-Judah Maccabee is that really so implausible?
But what does that mean as a novel in practice? Way too much middle school. A lot of fighting and having really bad ideas and parents trying their best and petty vandalism and conflicts with teachers some of whom are just doing their best in a hard situation. And mixed with all that across the thousand pages of this book is genuine gold. It gets what kids that age really care about and the weightiness with which they take it. (Though most of the characters talk like the hyperverbal and precocious Gurion, which is even awkwardly lampshaded in the book). One place it really succeeds is the genuine empathy it displays for all these kids with problems and the way they're mostly just normal kids who occasionally bite someone or whatever.
But the truth is middle school isn't the most important thing in the world and it mixes awkwardly with the more weighty things it wants you to care about. It can never articulate what its running idea about "damage" is really about because it's an adult idea that Gurion doesn't know how to talk about.
The ending is a bravura action sequence and good and bad this was an incredible achievement, but I think it would have been more incredible edited down and with an awareness of its strengths and weaknesses.
But what does that mean as a novel in practice? Way too much middle school. A lot of fighting and having really bad ideas and parents trying their best and petty vandalism and conflicts with teachers some of whom are just doing their best in a hard situation. And mixed with all that across the thousand pages of this book is genuine gold. It gets what kids that age really care about and the weightiness with which they take it. (Though most of the characters talk like the hyperverbal and precocious Gurion, which is even awkwardly lampshaded in the book). One place it really succeeds is the genuine empathy it displays for all these kids with problems and the way they're mostly just normal kids who occasionally bite someone or whatever.
But the truth is middle school isn't the most important thing in the world and it mixes awkwardly with the more weighty things it wants you to care about. It can never articulate what its running idea about "damage" is really about because it's an adult idea that Gurion doesn't know how to talk about.
The ending is a bravura action sequence and good and bad this was an incredible achievement, but I think it would have been more incredible edited down and with an awareness of its strengths and weaknesses.