I wish that I could rate this book higher, I really do. The narrator, Alex, is a brilliant twelve year old with a brain tumor that is causing him to have seizures. His stream of consciousness narration is engrossing and hilarious,
with the contrast between his intellectual abilities and his emotional perception, and the occasional deliberate prank played on him when he asks his father what something means, or at least when he did before he started to keep his mental To Google list instead. (My favorite, "Francophile" defined as somebody who is "sexually attracted to fascist dictators.")
However, it loses a star or so at the end because of my inability to reconcile the final part before the epilogue and the epilogue. I have read other reviews that suggest that the timeline is not necessarily linear, but if this is the case I'm unable to identify any other point where things are out of order before the very end, excluding when Alex is clearly remembering things, so it's a strange place to start jumping around. It's also possible it has something to do with Schrodinger's Cat. In either case, there's a significant gap in action between the last bit of the book that makes sense and the part where it
stops.
The rest of the book is a wonderful ride; I wish I didn't feel so let down by the ending.
Final Grade: B-, but it was a solid A until almost the end.