Idaho Winter

Burgess's wild latest concerns a ninth-grade boy named Idaho Winter who is abused by everyone for no apparent reason%E2%80%94even his school's crossing guard tries to get him killed. Only two people don't have it in for the poor boy: one is a classmate, Madison, the other is "you, the reader," but just when Madison attempts to befriend Idaho, they are separated, and the narrator, a free-floating omniscient observer, becomes a character in the story and is dismayed to find Idaho now in control and none too happy with the lot the narrator has given him. In self-preservation mode, the narrator leads a group of his own characters on a quest to reunite Idaho and Madison. Burgess (Pontypool Changes Everything) is nothing if not imaginative, and though he tends to tip too far into the ridiculous%E2%80%94particularly once Idaho starts his campaign of revenge on his former tormentors (a school guidance counselor, for instance, has been reduced to a talking head that protrudes from the back of the crossing guard; elsewhere lurk ferocious Mom-bats that have heads resembling Idaho's mother)%E2%80%94he proves himself to be a witty, lightning-quick conjurer of misanthropy in this brief, kaleidoscopic novel. (June)