Australian author Bone's offbeat but ultimately tender novel opens as 16-year-old Susan Bennett returns home after being booted from boarding school. She takes her overweight but graceful brother, whom she's nicknamed "Neat," to the Theater of Possibility, where audience members can write down their wishes and performers act them out. Neat, the subject of their father's award-winning book, The Silent Boy, breaks years of silence (he stopped talking on Susan's eighth birthday) to tell Susan that his wish is to save the world. With the help of Todd, a performer they meet at the theater, Neat lands a spot on community TV. But while the "fat Buddha" can reach strangers, there are still problems at home, like the battle that's raged between Susan and her dad since Neat stopped talking. The story alternates between Susan, Neat and Todd's perspectives (and with occasional excerpts from The Silent Boy). Readers will connect with each of the characters' complicated points of view, from Susan's anger toward her father, whom she felt used her brother for his own fame, to Neat's innocent longing to devour the pain he sees in others—including their father's feelings of loss when his son stopped speaking. The rather bizarre plot takes some jarring turns, e.g., the appearance of Mr. Goodman, a washed-up game show host who becomes Neat's TV cohost. Yet readers will find themselves swept up in the Bennetts' world, trying to figure out who's telling the truth about what happened eight years ago and how to interpret the fat boy's lyrical but often mystifying words. Ages 14-up. (Oct.)
