Godless by Pete Hautman

Reviewed by Lauren Schmidt, 1/6/06

What do 15-year-old boys do over a long, hot summer? They think about girls. They feel irritation about their parents. They hang out with their friends. If they're nerds, they read comics and maybe keep some creepy crawly things around to study. And, if they're Jason the Narrator and fed up with their enforced Catholicism, they found their own parody religion.

Jason's narration is very convincing as the thoughts of a 15-year-old, though he is possibly more insightful than many. He asks good questions about religion and faith, and examines what these things mean to him and other characters in the book. But the plot is very action-driven as well, as Jason and a strange, eclectic group of teenagers deal simultaneously with questions of faith, hormones, and a sometimes dangerous combination of summer boredom and bravery. The book is a quick read, and quite a page-turner.

I think I would have really loved this book as a young teenager -- Jason's depth of analysis of philosophies and other characters is about right for someone around his age to appreciate. As someone a bit past 15, I still quite liked it. But I found that what I mostly missed was insight into the characters other than Jason -- they all seemed like interesting people, but since we were hearing about them from the point of view of a 15-year-old who was rather inept at conversing with his peers, we didn't get a whole lot of insight into some of their thoughts and motivations. I felt a little dissatisfied at the end due to my continued lack of knowledge of the other characters, and I wished that the story had a bit more resolution on all the personal fronts in general. The main story arc was exciting and enjoyable, though it got wackier than I ever expected and pushed the boundaries of plausibility occasionally.