Fat Kid Rules the World
K. L. Going
Penguin Books
Fiction, YA General Fiction
Themes: Stardom, Urban Tales
****+
Description
Seventeen-year-old Troy Billings doesn't fit in - not in his family, not in school, not in Manhattan, not anywhere. Over six feet tall and nearly 300 pounds, not a day goes by when he doesn't seem to be the butt of everyone's joke and the object of everyone's disgust and utter loathing - his own, most of all. He was about to end it all by stepping in front of the subway when a voice stops him... a voice belonging to the dirtiest, skinniest young man Troy's ever seen. But the moment he hears the man's name, he's starstruck: this is none other than Curt MacCrae, a legend in the local punk rock scene, if a notoriously elusive one. He even went to the same high school as Troy, though he dropped out and disappeared a couple years ago. For some strange reason, Curt not only stopped him from ending his own life, but recruits him into a new band he's forming as the drummer (disregarding Troy's insistence that he last played drums in junior high and was never much good even back then). But there are reasons a prodigal guitar player like Curt has never moved beyond occasional gigs at a local dive known as the Dump, reasons that could drag Troy down just when the teen has started to think he can rise up.
Review
One of the truest bits of dialog I've heard in a movie is in the animated feature Kung Fu Panda, when the hefty
panda/unpromising student Po finally talks back to kung fu master Shifu, who has been disparaging and discouraging him since
they met. Po tells him that all the insults Shifu and the other students have hurled at him hurt no worse than every day of
his life just being him, then says he only stuck around because he figured if anyone could change things, make him not him,
it was Shifu. That vibe, the desperate bone-deep desire to not be what one sees in the mirror, is amped up to eleven in
Fat Kid Rules the World.
It starts with Troy quite literally on the edge, standing on the subway platform, wondering grimly if even his grisly suicide
by subway train would do no more than make people laugh at him. Even his own kid brother, who once looked up to him (nine
years ago, before the weight and before their mother died), seems to think the world would be better off with no Troy in it.
Curt's intervention saves his life and forges a bond not easily broken, not even when Curt's erratic behavior becomes harder
and harder to chalk up to artistic eccentricity. At first, it's just the push Troy needs to get out of his own head and his
own miseries and push some boundaries (internal and external). The "band", which is apparently just Curt's guitar and Troy's
as-yet-nonexistent drums, seems at first just to be a spur-of-the-moment lie Curt trots out to shut up Troy's obnoxious kid
brother... but Troy slowly realizes he's serious. Worse, he's finagled a debut for them at the Dump in just over a month,
when Troy hasn't so much as looked at a drum in years. Dazed and bedazzled and more than a little starstruck, he finds
himself pulled into Curt's orbit, as others have been before (and still are), but that orbit is not exactly a safe place to
be, and Curt isn't exactly a stable star at the heart of his little solar system, but one likely to go supernova at any
moment. Even as Troy finds himself warming up to this new possible future, this new possible him - who learns drumming from
one of the members of his favorite local punk band, who cuts school, who aids and abets the odd nonviolent crime, and who
actually hangs out with someone as legendary as the Curt MacCrae - he can't help seeing the problems and the wreckage
strewn in Curt's wake... just as he can't help noticing the many different "prescriptions" Curt takes, and how he can't
reliably remember from one minute to the next what he's committed himself (or others) to. As much as Troy needs someone to
rescue him from himself, it's possible Curt needs someone even more, but many have tried and failed, while Curt continues to
spiral further and further out of control. It all swirls around the pull of punk rock, not just the music and the rock scene
but the mindset and attitude - all of which Troy has secretly yearned toward for years, even if he's never had the courage to
embrace punk openly, certain it'll be just one more thing he fails at and one more reason for strangers to ridicule the big,
clumsy fat kid.
Troy's journey is not the quick and easy march from "self-loathing, insecure boy" to "successful young man who has found his
calling and future" that some might have written. There is no great montage moment where he casts aside all doubts and lives
up to a higher version of himself, with Curt as the eccentric but ultimately wise beyond his years mentor. Troy stumbles more
than once, and Curt falls down on the "mentor" job with increasing frequency, building to his own crisis where their bond
faces what might be a tipping point or a breaking point, depending on how they both react.
There are one or two points near the ending that I wasn't quite sure felt right, particularly in regards to Troy's father
(who, despite the potential stereotype of the widower ex-military father who appears deeply disappointed in his decidedly
non-military-grade eldest son, actually has a lot more to him than first appearances indicate) and brother (a character who
could've used a little bit more fleshing out). Despite that, there are innumerable moments that rang true about being an
awkward outsider who can't seem to figure out how to fit in to the life they've found themselves living, or even if there's
anywhere they can fit in, and what a many-layered, self-perpetuating, personal Hell such an existence can be, related in
Troy's point of view that's funny and gut-wrenching by turns. That was enough to earn it an extra half-star in the ratings.
Been there, done that, still living it in too many ways...