Chris Crutcher's Chinese Handcuffs is written in both narrative and letters written to Dillon's dead brother Preston.

Dillon's brother Preston was a troubled teen (well, it never states his age that I recall but he is 2 years older than Dillon). After a motorcycle accident left him paralyzed, Dillon turned more to drugs and a motorcycle gang. Unable to fight his demons, he killed himself in front of Dillon. The book deals with Dillon trying to figure out his life. Everything has changed for him. His mother left and took his younger sister Christy. It is now just Dillon and his dad.

Preston's death left behind feelings of anger, depression, sadness and one other thing, a baby. Dillon has had a crush on Stacy for years. Stacy only had eyes for Preston though. After Preston's death, Stacy goes away to North Dakota to "heal". The story when she comes back is that a cousin of hers had a baby out of wedlock and was going to put it up for adoption. Stacy convinced her parents to adopt the baby. You find out (although it is no real surprise) that the baby is really Stacy's and Preston's.

Then there is Jennifer. Dillon's friend and major basketball superstar at the high school, Jennifer is battling her own demons. Jennifer has been sexually abused by her biological father and is now being sexually abused by her step-father.

Dillon works through his grief over Preston, anger over Jennifer's abuse and love of Preston and Stacy's baby throughout the course of the year. Jennifer tries to work through her fear on the basketball court and Stacy comes clean over the intercom at school about the parentage of the baby.

While there is no pat "happy ending" there is some resolution. Dillon finally puts to rest his anger with his brother; helps Jennifer; loves Stacy's baby; and gets his dad to talk to him about life. ( )

I'm not much of a Crutcher fan, and this one was hard to read. It's pretty bleak, and deals with sexual abuse, suicide, violence, pregnancy, oh and animal torture. ( )

I cried. ( )

I have read almost every book this author has written, and loved most of them. So I was surprised to realize I hadn't yet read this one -- but I think I probably started it and stopped reading immediately due to a specific trigger for me that I have a difficult time getting past.

Oddly, the problem for me wasn't that between them, only four young people experience ALL of the following issues: motorcycle accident leading to amputation, drug abuse, sexual molestation, domestic abuse, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and being forced to witness a violent suicide. (Although it became a little much for me when the teenage pregnancy was revealed to be deliberate because "I thought I was losing him.")

No, what really bothered me was that the main character, Dillon, and his now-dead-by-suicide older brother, Preston, brutally killed a neighbor's cat when they were kids, because the cat "hurt" their dog. This is the same main character we're supposed to be rooting for throughout the book. And although Dillon experiences some guilt and does come back to this eventually, the people to whom he confesses all say "well, you were a kid" or "well, we all have a dark side." I would never dismiss someone's sadistic behavior towards an animal in such a casual fashion.

Even worse is that when Preston commits suicide, he explains to Dillon that he has to do it because the night before, he cheered on an "Accused"-style gang rape (I'm referring to the Jodi Foster movie) in a bar because the girl "was asking for it." Then, because Preston is handicapped due to the motorcycle accident, his biker buddies put him on the pool table and force the gang-raped girl to have sex with him. And Preston is all humiliated. To be fair, he actually says that he's killing himself because he promised himself that he would end it if he ever went as far as the time they killed that cat. So at least he knows on some level that he had to be pretty far gone to have cheered on that gang rape.

Also, I understand that Dillon is dealing with the fact that his brother then shoots himself right there in front of him, so it's reasonable that the gang rape is not the first thing on his mind. But Dillon goes to confront the biker guys, never mentions a word about the gang rape, but says "you humiliated my brother." And for the rest of the book, which is meant to be Dillon coming to terms with everything, this gang rape is never brought up again. It doesn't matter that this girl is scarred for life, but just that the bikers humiliated Preston, and in Dillon's mind, that's the main reason why Preston killed himself.

And to think that Preston's girlfriend deliberately got pregnant trying to keep Preston, as though he were worth keeping!

My sense of personal offense aside, this book was a big of a mess. It alternates between Dillon's first-person letters to the dead Preston and Jennifer's third person POV of her abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Occasionally we get another character's POV, including the typical Crutcher version of a high school principal who cares only about sports and his disciplinary authority. We also get the abusive stepfather POV once or twice. In the case of both the principal and the stepfather, it seems like they are thinking unflattering things about themselves in a quite unrealistic way.

I have to admit, seeing the blatant flaws in this book make me wonder if I was a little too naive when I loved some of his other books so much, particularly "Staying Fat for Sarah Byrnes" and Stotan!" I can't decide if I should re-read them because I'm afraid I'll be impatient with the cliched characters -- the jackass principal, the super religious students who are the ones to fall the farthest and fastest, etc.

On a final note, I dug up a 1989 review of this book from when it was first published. The author said something to the effect that it's not a problem to have serious issues in a YA book .... but you don't have to have ALL of the serious issues in just the one book. I agree. ( )

Dillon, team trainer for his high school girl’s basketball team and fledgling triathlete, watched his older brother commit suicide. Told through letters to Dillon’s brother, as well as through flashbacks, Crutcher tells the story of Jen – sexually abused by her father, then her stepfather, since she was 5 years old. Now 18, and a star basketball player, she has reached a crossroads. By trying to protect her younger sister from the same fate, her stepfather has boxed her into a corner where she can only see one way out for herself.

Read more at: http://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/ ( )