Save Me

The incredible Adam Spark
Alan Bissett
Headline Review

A very unusual thing happened to me last week when I was coming home from the gym. It was Saturday afternoon and I had just finished a gruelling workout (note to self -- never do legs when the trainer has a hangover -- she gets real mean.) As a reward for making it through the session without either giving up or throwing up, I decided that I deserved a trip to the bookstore. As usual, I let the books pick me and I ended up coming home with three selections. I didn't notice it at the time, but each of the titles contained a boy's name -- The incredible Adam Spark, Getting Rid of Matthew, and We Need to Talk About Kevin. I'm sure there must be a message in there somewhere -- if only I had collected enough cereal box tops to send away for that decoder ring ...

Anyway ... let's talk about Adam. The incredible Adam Spark was, for me, a very engaging read. Bissett's brilliant use of colloquial Scots combined with a sort of stream of consciousness narration quite literally hurt my head. I found that I often had to resort to reading sentences out loud in order to figure out what the narrator was saying. Not such a bad strategy in the privacy of my own home, but it did occasion some odd looks on the streetcar during my morning commute.

The story centres on a developmentally challenged young man, Sparkie/Adam, who, after getting a nasty crack in the head, wakes up to discover that he has superpowers; not only can he see auras, but he has also developed the ability to communicate with machines and animals. While his new skills may come in handy in his quest for Employee-of-the-Month, Adam understands that he really needs to use his powers for good. Knowing what "good" is -- well, that's the challenge.

Over the course of the novel Sparkie/Adam has a lot of adventures. He falls in with a gang, falls out with his sister, and falls in love with girl name Bonnie. He is both wonderful and repulsive and I didn't really want his story to end. I'll definitely be coming back to Bissett to see what other work he has written. There was so much packed into a few hunderd pages that I will be thinking about this book for weeks to come. Four big macs out of five. Supersized.