Book Review: I Crawl Through It

Book Review: I Crawl Through It by AS King 

Goodreads Description: Four teenagers are on the verge of exploding. The anxieties they face at every turn have nearly pushed them to the point of surrender: senseless high-stakes testing, the lingering damage of past trauma, the buried grief and guilt of tragic loss. They are desperate to cope, but no one is listening.

So they will lie. They will split in two. They will turn inside out. They will even build an invisible helicopter to fly themselves far away…but nothing releases the pressure. Because, as they discover, the only way to truly escape their world is to fly right into it.

The genius of acclaimed author A.S. King reaches new heights in this groundbreaking work of surrealist fiction; it will mesmerize readers with its deeply affecting exploration of how we crawl through traumatic experience—and find the way out.

My Review: This book is certainly a product of its time. It was published in 2015, when internet meme culture began to shift away from XD rawr randomness, mustaches, and hipster irony. The book uses this "randomness" meme culture as a metaphor to explore domestic trauma, mental health, and the struggles of growing up, but it feels like a "fellow kids" moment, as King doesn't seem to have a clear grasp of the culture she's emulating. 

This book's approach to trauma is... interesting, to say the least. It features a cast of protagonists that are all coping with their personal traumas, though even after finishing the book, it's hard to tell what each character is actually dealing with. The book cloaks the reality of what happens in surrealism, and then relies on that surrealism to convey the emotional fallout and coping methods of each character; how they "crawl through it," if you will. But either King is scared of naming the traumas outright -- perhaps that would shatter the denial-like illusion -- or she has little understanding of how to express traumatic experiences through surrealism due to a lack of personal experience -- or both. Because of that, the surreal elements lack metaphorical significance to the events at play. Everything feels disjointed and purposeless -- random without any understanding of what made "randomness" meme culture work. Some of the metaphors used did connect back to the subject in a powerful way, such as China turning herself inside out as a response to anxiety, but so many elements feel completely disconnected. Several characters escape to a "genius-land" on an invisible helicopter, and while I could see the intention behind this subplot (escaping the stressors of reality through an imaginary paradise), the metaphor completely falls apart once they arrive and it fails to communicate anything meaningful about escapism, the myth of genius, academic/career pressures placed on youth, etc. 

It's a shame, because surrealist fiction can effectively express the confusion and intensity of traumatic emotions, but King doesn't dive deep enough into the emotions to achieve that. It's just randomness for randomness' sake, with no thought behind the arrangement of surrealist elements. There's no emotional gut punch here, no interesting metaphorical take on life, or even cool magical realism vibes. The book pretends to be deep, but it's shallower than the kiddy pool. 

TL;DR: All in all, 1/5 stars. Painfully underwhelming.