Telling Reality

Occasionally, a book stumbles in to my To-Be-Read pile. Someone recommends it to me, or I see in an article, or it's new at the library. For one reason or another, I start reading it, though there are hundreds of other books I could be reading instead. Then this book that has appeared out of the ether grabs me by the collar and doesn't let go until I read the last page, when it simply lingers in my mind, filtering my thoughts and memories. Not many books do this. The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie. Exit, Pursued by a Bear by E. K. Johnston. Now I can add to the stack:

Opioid, Indiana by Brian Allen Carr.

As a recent addition to the land of the Hoosiers, I consider it a responsibility to find out more about this land and its people. At first glance, they seem much like Kansans or Nebraskans. But Hoosiers are their own breed, for better or for worse. So, of course, the title of this book jumped out at me. While Indiana has some strange town names, I was fairly certain that "Opioid" was not one of them. So I read the brief description offered, was intrigued, and put it on my holds list on my library app. And I waited.

This morning, I got the notification that I could borrow this book. A few taps, and there was the first page. Several hours later, I reached the last page. I haven't read a book in one sitting in a hot minute and I was almost disoriented when I finally pulled my brain out of the (electronic) pages. I shook my head like I had just gotten out of a lake. Then I pulled out my computer because I knew I had to write about it.

Opioid, Indiana follows a 17-year-old boy over the course of a week. We see the world of a rural Indiana town from his perspective. It could've taken place last week. It's full of cultural references, bringing up Trump, Kendrick Lamar, vape pens, and, of course, the opioid epidemic, among others. Our narrator, Riggle, sees the world in almost a chunky way, spitting out descriptions in choppy, sharp sentences. If all 17-year-old boys experience the world in a way like Riggle, I'm surprised they're not more miserable than they already are. 

Teenagers struggle to understand their place in the world, but they struggle even more to understand how the people around them fit in it. Most of the time they're so concerned with their own minds that they forget that other minds are out there whirring away too. Only a few years ago, I was one of them, and I've now spent a year trapped in a room with them every day. For Riggle, and for some of my students, the light goes on. Or rather, the rose-colored glass gets broken. A stone is thrown and in comes the wind, cold and putrid and stabbing, making your world a completely new place. You discover one day that you affect others and they affect you, but there are other cause-and-effects that have nothing to do with you. Your circling of the sun collides with others, but there are collisions all around, all the time. Everything is new and miraculous and old and terrible, all crunched up inside a human mind. You have to find ways to cope, to understand, to share, to tell, to keep. Maybe we're all a little bit bizarre, with faults and mendings and confusion. But just like with Pandora's box, in and with all of this comes the sweet breeze of hope. For something different or better or new. But something.

Human stories are all the same and all blindingly unique. We read the same stories over and over again. Whether out of comfort or cruelty, I don't know. We can only tell what we know. We can only read what is told. So I read. And I listen. And I hope.

(from kirkusreviews.com)