YOU DON'T KNOW ME

After sustaining regular abuse from "the man who is not my father," and keeping it from his mother "or else," John, whose real father "named me after a toilet," goes psychologically underground. Author David Klass allows John's "life that is not a life" to unfold through stream-of-consciousness personal observations, perhaps investing the boy with more insights than the average 14-year-old, but John is anything but average. Nick Landrum's performance of John's interior monologue is genuine and heart-wrenching, never allowing the boy's ironic, self-deprecating commentary to become an exercise in self-pity. He captures John's negative, sarcastic, sometimes surreal take on the world, making the listener understand John's emotional isolation--and his wisdom, which has grown from pain. Older teens will find John's story hard to resist. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2004, Portland, Maine [Published: DEC 04/ JAN 05]