It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. To let them know I really cared about them and I’m sorry I couldn’t be more than I was-that I couldn’t stick around-and that what’s going to happen today isn’t their fault. I want to give them each something to remember me by. In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. Published by Little, Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock Little, Brown & Company (August 2013) But he also adds enough humor and an obvious love for his characters to allow you to undertake difficult narrative journeys you might otherwise be apt to avoid. Matthew Quick is so adept at tackling difficult subjects, like mental health, anger, hurt, and psychological damage. Fortunately, he experiences little bits of that, but is it enough, and is it too late?Įvaluation: This is a good story and an important one, especially if you have teens in your life. He just wants people to listen to him, to notice him, and to be kind.

But he doesn’t want to have to beg for it. Leonard, however, perhaps unlike those others, doesn’t really want to use his gun he wants to be saved.

I bet they felt lonely in many ways, helpless, FORGOTTEN, ignored, alienated, irrelevant, cynical, and sad. “You should read about all those killers. At one point, after saying “I’m beginning to see why people go mad and do awful things – like the Nazis and Hitler and Ted Kaczynski and Timothy McVeigh and Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold and Cho Seung-Hui…” he adds this important footnote: Leonard reveals his feelings and plans in first person narrative interspersed with the aforementioned letters and also a series of footnotes he adds, in a reflection of both his sense of humor and his love of learning and truth, in spite of his cruddy life. Yes, if you are thinking this is a depressing book, you would be correct! He tells us that once he went to the park and watched the pigeons and “I felt so so lonely that I hoped someone would come along and stick a knife into my ribs just so they could have my empty wallet.” “I know that you really just want everything to end – that you can’t see anything good in your future, that the world looks dark and terrible, and maybe you’re right – the world can definitely be a dreadful place.” In letters he writes to himself from the future (at the urging of his only caring teacher), we learn how he is feeling: In fact, his mother doesn’t even live with him most of the time, since he is attending high school in South Jersey and she is off in New York City working on her fashion design career. This book begins on the morning of Leonard Peacock’s 18th birthday, which even his own mother doesn’t remember.

Leonard peacock