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Brooks, Kevin. Kissing the Rain.
Chicken House/Scholastic, 2004 [336p]
ISBN 0-439-57742-X $16.95
Reviewed fom galleys
Gr. 7-12
Hard choices have been the mainstay of the young adult novel since the inception
of the genre, back when Jerry chose to defy the Vigils in Cormier’s The
Chocolate War (BCCB 7/74); it was also true when Susan went with the crowd
in Duncan’s Killing Mr. Griffin (10/78), or, more recently, when
Young yielded his independence to his charismatic best friend in Giles’
Shattering Glass (5/02). These novels set up situations wherein there
is a right choice, though that right choice may be the painful one, the one
regrettably left untaken, or even the doomed one. Sometimes, however, a right
choice is a luxury that an individual simply doesn’t have, and the only
free will one can exercise is to favor one evil over another—and neither
is the lesser. Such is the situation of Kevin Brooks’ Moo Nelson in Kissing
the Rain.
Moo is a largely miserable teenager, tormented at school as the fat kid (by
predictable downpours of abuse he terms “the rain”), depressed by
the sameness and limitations of his home. His favorite occupation is to hang
out on the footbridge over the highway, watching the cars go by (he’s a
bit of a car aficionado) and enjoying the soothing noise and motion, and one
day from this vantage point he observes a strange event, a peculiar altercation
between the driver of one car and the people in another. After talking to the
police, he finds himself caught in a power struggle. One police officer wants
him to change his story to ensure the rigged altercation gets the driver, a
known criminal, put in prison as planned. Other officers want Moo to keep to
his story (especially if it means implicating the crooked cop who staged the
event and who wants Moo to lie), and so does the driver’s posh lawyer and
the driver himself, a menacing figure who makes it clear that Moo will have
to pay a high price if he lies.
British author Brooks (Martyn Pig, BCCB 9/02) creates a believable, idiosyncratic
voice for Moo, making him vivid as a person in his own right and not just as
the object of events. Though his quandary is intricate, it’s also clearly
and bleakly presented: the truth gets Moo the enmity of a police officer who
has the ability to put Moo’s father away for welfare fraud and a frightening
connection to a dangerous underworld figure; a lie gets him the enmity of that
underworld figure but puts him away, while keeping his father out of jail (“I
know I AIN’T doing the right thing,” thinks Moo despairingly, “cos
there AIN’T no right thing to DO. There’s just 2 wrong things”).
Brooks adds interesting complications with the changes in Moo’s status
at school (as a result of his chief persecutor’s connection to one of the
police officers as well as his increased notoriety) and his awkward relationship
with his fellow bully-prey, Brady, who makes a foolish decision as a result
of Moo’s changed status in an attempt to garner his own increased credibility.
There’s an understandable change in Moo as, trapped, he begins to grow
weary and indifferent to the price he may pay, and as he sets out to resolve
the situation with a third possibility, one so dark and drastic neither side
will expect it.
Most bracing of all is the book’s refusal to compromise its toughness.
Moo isn’t in a dilemma because he’s a kid and therefore can’t
see the long-term view, but because this situation offers no acceptable way
out. That’s not a quandary that usually appears in literature for young
people, but it’s certainly one that occurs in real life. The psychological-thriller
element of this absorbing novel will definitely appeal to readers, but many
will also grimly empathize with the no-exit nature of Moo’s life. (Imprint
information appears on p. 224.)
Deborah Stevenson, Editor
Cover illustration by James L. Amos/Corbis from Kissing the Rain ©2004.
Used by permission of The Chicken House/Scholastic, Inc.
This page was last updated on February 1, 2004.