GRAND & HUMBLE
Brent Hartinger
HarperTempest
Fiction
ISBN: 0060567279
224 pages

• Read an Excerpt

On the surface, Manny and Harlan have absolutely nothing in common. Sure, they're the same age and they attend the same high school. But Harlan is the school's golden boy --- the school president and star of the swim team, dating the hottest girl in school. Manny, on the other hand, is a big nobody. He does lighting for the school plays, and in his spare time he enjoys making movies and designing websites. He's
happy enough with his single dad, who's a paralegal, but no one would ever call his life glamorous. Harlan, by contrast, does have an exciting life: his dad is a U.S. Senator, even if it's his mom who really runs the show. Harlan's life is a whirl of parties, receptions and celebrities.

So why do both Harlan and Manny share the same sense of dread? Manny has been suffering from crazy nightmares that seem to be about his own past. Harlan has frightening visions of the future that seem to be coming true. Could they be connected? As the psychic whom Harlan consults says, "the past and the future are often one and the same." What secrets lurk in the boys' disturbing visions --- and why are they both drawn to the same intersection, at the crossing of Grand and Humble?

Brent Hartinger, who has won popular and critical acclaim for his earlier young adult novels such as GEOGRAPHY CLUB and THE LAST CHANCE TEXACO, again does a great job of delving realistically into the social lives and psyches of teenagers. As readers get farther and farther into GRAND & HUMBLE, though, they'll realize that Manny and Harlan's stories verge more on magical realism than on the everyday.

The novel's surprising ending will inspire many to reread the story immediately, picking up on clues that they might have missed the first time around. In addition to being well-plotted, though, this suspenseful novel also includes genuinely thought-provoking questions about why we are who we are, and how the smallest choices may have the largest consequences.

   --- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

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