I know Craig Gidney (the author), so I was excited to see this book come to fruition. There is a nice balance of lyrical and less ornate prose working in tandem, as Rafe's (the protagonist) day dreams of myth and fantasy give way to the reality of dealing with a new prep school. At the school he is besieged outwardly by racist fellow students and his own unconscious realizations that he might not be straight. At home Rafe is equally forced to confront the physical and the ephemeral, as his mother falters between religious ecstasy and mental breakdown, and his estranged father deals with an unspoken homelessness. Ultimately the novel is about balances: between Rafe's persona of the shy fantasy geek and the teenager inwardly deciding he might be gay, angry at the injustice around him, the spiritual beliefs of a Christian mother (symbolized by opaque angels) and the cultural beliefs of a father (symbolized by the mall kiosk Dan masks), the predators both virulently open and cunningly hidden in the prep school, and Rafe's own decisions of balancing who he will become in his own life. In a welcome change from YA novels where everything builds to an exacting conclusion, Gidney recognizes that the years of being a teenager are never wrapped up in a tidy package. Instead they have continuing ramifications in life, existing moment to moment. Rafe learns how to accept his future and embrace the best aspects of his reality to deal with the ongoing challenges of a repairing family and a flawed educational and religious system.