Review Detail

I think I've found one of my new favorite authors: Ken Schafer. This book, "An Otherwise Perfect Plan: A Novel of Mystery, Love, and of Chocolate that Defies Description", is a work of art. The words practically sing.

Gwen is the teen daughter of a single mom, living in one tragic sub-Boston housing development after another. The most recent is made tolerable by a rat-proof file cabinet, her cat Buddha, and her BFF Peter, with his pot-smoking, tuned-out parents.

Gwen's mom works two jobs, each as rewarding as laundry, but Gwen's job is to finish high school. A job made noticeably harder by her English Lit teacher who assigns a 3-page essay based on "your earliest recollection of you and your father doing something meaningful together." Gwen does not know her father and cannot describe a day, or even a minute that she spent in the man's presence, which she tries to explain to her burnt out teacher, who doesn't want to listen. "You kids all whine and moan about the assignments. Three whole pages. Please! I’ve been doing this same curriculum twice a year for fifteen years. Fifteen years! At sixty, three-page papers a year, do you know how much I’ve read?”

What is Gwen going to do? She could cop out with the God is my Father approach, or put some work into it. Gwen does have a photo of her mom and her dad, taken in one of those Las Vegas photo booths on the weekend in which she was created. Apparantly, what happens in Vegas does not always stay there. Gwen and Peter try to track down the man in the photo, but are only rewarded with a fistful of dead ends. Undaunted, Gwen decides to enlist the help of a private investigator, who meets them at the most phenomenal hot chocolate on the East Coast.

As anyone whose read YA knows, a lot of it is written in "stream of consciousness" style, but is often not really done well. It's like driving a Maserati with a peanut butter sandwich in one hand and a tennis ball in the other. "An Otherwise Perfect Plan..." is not the disaster it could have been. It's a racecar with Dale Earnhardt at the wheel, or a hot-dang-blistering guitar solo by Jimi Hendriks or frigging Stevie Ray Vaughan. What a story! Gwen is sarcastic and witty and vulnerable. Mom and Peter and his wigged out parents, and a PI called Not Dad; it's all golden. It's stellar! It's a creative masterpiece!

Read this book if you're a kid, or a mom with a kid, or a dude with a potbelly, or a lonely librarian. Read this book. It might not change your life, but it'll change the next day or so, and that's pretty much why we read, right? "An Otherwise Perfect Plan: A Novel of Mystery, Love, and of Chocolate that Defies Description" by Ken Schafer. 5 out of 5 Stars. It's the kind of book that makes you want to read it in one sitting, or read it again and again. Truly Amazing.

Review by PureResearch originally published on Amazon.com