I was not sure after 70 pages if I should keep going, but I did because the book is set close to the place I just moved to. I am glad I finished it, although I did not really get the sense others did that the different characters have their own voices; it almost felt like the same character just from different perspectives (although the lives did, somewhat, turn out to be different).
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Merit Badges by Kevin Fenton is one that I requested. I started it a couple weeks ago, then had to put it aside to read my library book club book--and never picked it up again. It just wasn't very engaging. I can barely tell you what it was about--several marginalized teens alternated voicing the chapters. and they each had different sad stories. It took awhile to catch on to that--each chapter was being narrated by one of the characters. They each led desperate lives of one kind or another--one boy's father had just committed suicide, another skips school often to hang out with the gang at a bar in a really seedy area. But pretty much the plot was their lives--in other words, there wasn't much of one, and what there was wasn't particularly interesting. Not much of a story arc. There are some amusing bits--they do manage to get themselves into some jams--generally centered around drinking too much.

I'll be frank, when I read the back of the book I wasn't sure what to expect, but I was intrigued enough to open it. It's hard to go wrong with a book that quotes Virginia Woolf at the beginning. So I settled down and began to read.

Merit Badges is a well crafted novel. From its Rockwell with a twist opening to its abrupt shift in tone in the second chapter and through to the end it was clearly well thought out. The different voices of the characters are each distinct; and each sentence is built so that you have to pay attention to it (much like Woolf in a way) or you may miss something crucial.

I thoroughly enjoyed Fenton's use of metaphor throughout the various narratives. The one that sticks most in my mind is Barb's statement, "The metaphor for love should not b the heart, but the tendons. They are vaguely gristley, like love,. They connect us to the world. They are easily strained. Tendons are a metaphor for my heart because they are graceless and everywhere."

Now that's the kind of writing that makes you sit up and take notice. This is not the sort of book that you can skim through, because on each page there is at least one sentence that will demand that you go back and read the section (if not start over from the beginning) because of its style.

Merit Badges is tells the interweaving stories of young people growing up, moving away and, in some cases, coming back to, small town Minnesota. But, like many books with simple descriptions, it is so much more than that. Each narrative is compelling, they fit together richly. This is a book to curl up with and spend an afternoon or an evening reading. Highly, highly recommended.