Review of Idiot! A love-story with drama, betrayal and e-mail, by Colin Neenan

Jimmy is 16 going on 17, and in many ways typical of a gangly teenage boy. He�s uncommunicative, undemonstrative, fascinated by the opposite sex and the idea of sex, yet does not want to know when his best friend hints at having had a sexual experience. He has enough on his plate�his mom has just walked out on the family for some unspecified reason, his father is in a do-nothing Zen mode, his bossy activist sister is back home to hold up the fort, and his fraternal twin brother Jake is, as usual, stoned to the gills.

And as if all this were not enough, his best friend Gene brings up the idea of auditioning for the school play �A Midsummer Night�s Dream�. Trading lines with his long-time friend Zanny (Suzannah), Jimmy discovers that he�s in love with her. However, he has reason to believe that Zanny�s in love with his brother Jake.

When Gene�s girlfriend falls in love with a boy she�s been chatting with on the internet for a year and dumps Gene, Jimmy gets the idea of wooing Zanny via e-mail. As eloquent online as he�s not in real life, Jimmy courts Zanny via the web and from behind a false persona. But when he learns that Zanny�the budding gossip columnist who�s always after the story that would make her famous�has printed out the words he�s poured from his heart, Jimmy must intercept and destroy the incriminating evidence before the world gets to read his innermost thoughts.

Who would have guessed that a passing photographer would take a picture of him high up a tree literally eating his words? And who would have guessed that Jimmy�s picture would get splashed all over the tabloids, and he and Zanny would end up on Oprah and Leno, with their own agent and a pending book tour?

Idiot! A love story with drama, betrayal and e-mail is a well-wrought tale of teenage angst told from the point of view of a teenage boy. We all know a Jimmy or two, but author Colin Neenan has deftly got under the skin of one particular Jimmy to show us the vulnerable, angst-filled boy whose inner turmoil is so skilfully hidden by an aloof and apathetic exterior.

While Jimmy ties himself up in knots inside, tormenting himself about Zanny and Jake, he�s just as wretched worrying about his parents, wondering how they could possibly stop loving each other when they had loved one another so much in earlier years. In several deeply revealing passages, he agonizes over Zanny�s feelings towards him, not wanting her to merely accept him in a passionless way, and wondering if he could trust her to be who she appears to be. Is Zanny merely trying to capitalize on their new-found fame and fortune? Does she love him the way he loves her?

Idiot!�s strength lies very much in the characterization of Jimmy, a sympathetic and well-conceived protagonist, but perhaps even more so in its refusal to stoop to a clich�d �romantic� happy-ever-after ending.

Jimmy may be your average taciturn teenage boy, but his emotional life is rich and full (if unacknowledged on the surface), and even though he�s disillusioned by the discovery of the impermanence of love�even passionate �true� love�he�s determined that he would only entertain a love that�s honest and unselfish and pure.

Colin Neenan�s other works include In Your Dreams and Live A Little. If Idiot! is anything to go by, he appears to have cornered the fiction market aimed at thinking male teenagers (a rarefied field indeed). I would definitely seek out his other titles and highly recommend Idiot! to all readers, especially teenagers, and taciturn boys in particular.

J.C. Hall is the author of the fantasy novels 'Legends of the Serai' and 'Lady of the Lakes'. The sequel to Lady of the Lakes will be published by Zumaya Publications. Her poems have appeared in various fantasy magazines while her non-fiction writing includes book reviews and travel articles. You can find out more about JC and her work by visiting Her Website