LitPick Review
Skate Fate is the story of Lucky Z, a boy who's had a pretty rough time of it. His mother has died of breast cancer, he's been abandoned by his dad, and a drag racing accident has left him in a wheelchair. That story could have a lot of promise. Unfortunately, author Juan Felipe Herrera's plot leaves much to be desired; and the story is told in poems, which can get really confusing. Though Herrera's writing is lovely, it's much too vague to really give the reader a good idea of the plot, so the reader is left, instead, with a hazy idea of a plot that she's forced to piece together, like putting together a puzzle when you don't know which pieces will fit. Lucky Z references people teasing him because he is gay, his love of skateboarding, his habit of carrying around art books, and the fact that he is in a wheelchair without any of these details coming together to form a coherent story. One could say that the part of the story with the clearest plot is the book jacket.
Opinion:
The high point of the novel is quite clearly Herrera's writing. The poems, though disjointed and confusing as one piece, make for excellent reading as stand-alones, without any connection to each other. Herrera is able to cleverly manipulate the English language to create poems out of very simple words that both convey emotion successfully and powerfully and can embody the spirit of Lucky Z in a way that brings him close to the reader, though it is hard for the reader to decipher anything about his story whatsoever. These are not poems with big, flashy words, intended to have intellectual appeal, instead, simple lines like When the sun is still watery/ whimpery soft & uncurled have an even bigger impact on the reader. Though some of the poems are weak in this style, (the author dabbles in writing poems from the perspective of certain inanimate objects, a technique I can't say he's done anything to warm me to), others are powerful, as sweeping and soaring as a young boy on a skateboard. I wouldn't recommend this book for someone who is looking for a good story, but it's the perfect book for someone just hoping to read some good modern poetry. The content in this book is fine for all ages, but because the story is difficult to follow (I, at thirteen years old, honestly found it challenging) I would recommend it for readers who are twelve and over, or who are advanced readers.
