Going Bovine

Going Bovine
Libba Bray
September 2009
Reading Level: YA

Summary:

Can Cameron find what he’s looking for?
All 16-year-old Cameron wants is to get through high school—and life in general—with a minimum of effort. It’s not a lot to ask. But that’s before he’s given some bad news: he’s sick and he’s going to die. Which totally sucks. Hope arrives in the winged form of Dulcie, a loopy punk angel/possible hallucination with a bad sugar habit. She tells Cam there is a cure—if he’s willing to go in search of it. With the help of a death-obsessed, video-gaming dwarf and a yard gnome, Cam sets off on the mother of all road trips through a twisted America into the heart of what matters most.

Review:

Libba Bray is an amazing author, as she proved with The Gemma Doyle Trilogy. However, I think that the events in Going Bovine were just a little too different for me.

This book is filled with crazy circumstances. The whole book focuses on Cameron, who has mad cow disease, and his adventures trying to find a cure for his disease. The adventures he has are totally wacky, for lack of a better word, but something kept me turning the pages. The question that kept me going is whether or not Cameron was hallucinating or not, and it became clearer and clearer as the book went on. 

I will say this, the writing itself is impeccable. I wouldn't have read a book this wacky if the writing was bad, but Libba Bray knows how to draw a reader in.


Lastly, the message of the book was definitely a good one, even if the story itself was weird. It was a tale of love, friendship, and most of all finding yourself. While the content of the book wasn't my cup of tea, the message was great, and the writing was great, and so I'd say there's definitely a reason that this book won the Printz Award, even if I didn't love it the way I wanted it to.