Matt McAvoy Book Review

The author makes clear at the start of Becoming Calvin that it is the first instalment of a larger book split into a trilogy.  It therefore stands alone as a slice-of-life, coming-of-age, literary-fiction offering, which doesn’t delve too much into narrative.  It is rather about young Calvin’s later teenage years, his friendships, ambitions and goals, and predominantly their sexual experiences.  If 1990s teenagers having and talking about sex is your thing, then you’ll probably find the book a decent offering in its genre.  It is genuinely quite funny at times, and these are predominantly when it is not being what you might call politically correct; the book is set in the 1990s, so it has the right not to be.  I’m not sure exactly where the second book is going to go, but I think it promises to have more substance and story development, as Calvin – his family big lottery-jackpot winners – enters the music industry in earnest as part one draws to a close.  I can’t at this moment advise what the whole arc is going to be, because I have no idea, but I am fortunate enough to be in a position to review all three books in the series, and I look forward to doing so, so will review the saga as a whole with each passing entry. 

My hunch is that it’s going to be very good, if not going anywhere fantastical.  Javier de Lucia is a very good writer, and I do like his style a lot (teenager antics aside).  We appear to be roughly the same age, too, so I can absolutely vouch for the freedom of expression, hope and ambition that his characters are defined by.  There are poignant moments, perhaps sad – and I’m sure there will be more – as well as the usual angsty issues faced exclusively by this age group, from any era. Javier is well worth following, and I have a feeling this series will be, too.  I did, for the most part, enjoy this short read, though I do hope the second instalment takes us somewhere unexpected – or just somewhere beyond the setting of Becoming Calvin.  For the time being, though, it is interesting reading about the “inbetweeners”; kids of school-leaving age who aren’t really the cool kids, nor particularly nerdy, nor bullied, bullies or involuntary celibates; it is refreshing that the usual tropes of American high-school fiction are not applied – which makes me think this is going to be simply a by-the-way step toward the rest of Calvin’s journey.  Well worth a read, and a good quality example in the genre.