Paranoid Park, by Blake Nelson

Paranoid Park, by Blake Nelson, is the story of a young, middle class high school skater who lives in Portland. One day, while skating at an illegal skate park (Paranoid Park), he ends up trying to hop a train, and when discovered by a security guard, the skater accidentally kills him. The book then follows the skater, who is unnamed, as he deals with deciding if he should tell anyone of the incident while at the same time dealing with divorcing parents, girls, sex, and life in high school. Paranoid Park is written in a first person perspective, and a majority of the book is his narrative of the life of the progatanist as he deals with the weight of killing someone, while dealing with high school. It realistically shows the world through pre-teen to teen eyes, and the progatanist's narrative stunningly shows the inner emotional feelings of an adolescent going through hard times, and his attempts to hid his feelings, and the accident, while his world crashes down around him. A great narrative of teenage life, at its worst.


-Reviewed by Anonymous, grade 9.