LitPick Review
Frederick Langlois could be that geeky 17-year-old notebook-toting sage found in every high school, feeling deeply, spouting out tiny poems, just a little too old for his years. But Frederick isn't in high school. He's in a hospital ward with other critically ill adolescents, dying of bone cancer. Mercury Under My Tongue chronicles his short stay there, from his distant but friendly relationship with his therapist, through comic moments in the ward and his emergent friendships with other teenage patients. Some survive, others are lost, and at the end, Frederick must make a final reckoning with himself and his family, one that is at once dispassionate and deeply felt. Avoiding both misty stoicism and made-for-TV bathos, the book exposes the fallible body as the humanizing factor that grounds spirited adolescent talk, delicate and at times acerbic, creating a believable, likable protagonist while weaving a compelling, lyrical story.
Opinion:
Mercury Under My Tongue was an extremely emotional and poignant book. It had a really interesting plot, and was like no other book I'd ever read. I especially loved reading this book because of Frederick, who was the perfect choice to tell the story. Through his notebook and poetry, he is extremely witty and charming, even through all of the terrible things he is going through. Although I loved the characters and the plot, Trudel's writing was slightly boring at times. There was hardly any dialogue, which usually makes a story more appealing, so I often found myself day-dreaming while reading. Toward the end of the book, things started getting more interesting and I started to really enjoy reading it. All in all, I really liked Mercury Under My Tongue and thought it was a great read.
