The late 1980s come alive in this moving and keenly observed story of one boy's unforgettable sophomore year, and his parents' surprising journey alongside him. It's the fall of 1987 and life as normal is ending for the Malone family. With their sterile Dallas community a far cry from the Irish-American Bronx of their youth, Pat and Anne Malone have reached a breaking point. Pat, chief actuary for a struggling American Airlines, has fallen into his drinking, using the burn of alcohol to hide the mental and physical toll of his recent MS diagnosis. Meanwhlie, Anne, his dutiful and devoutly Catholic wife, has been selected as a juror for a highly publicized attempted murder trial. For the first time, Anne's attention is wavering and the questions she's buried her entire life, about God and about men in power, begin to break through. Together, Pat and Anne try to raise their only son, Daniel, a sophomore at Jesuit College Prep. Bright but unmotivated, Dan is aware of the cracks in his family, but reprieve is found in his Honors English class, where he and his classmates are shocked into actual learning by their enigmatic teacher Mr. Oglesby. For once, Dan is unable to fly under the radar, and must ask himself what he might want to make of his life. With humor and tenderness, Sophomores captures the enduring poignancy of coming-of-age, teenage epiphanies and heartbreak, and family redemption.
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I tried so hard to like this book, but felt like I was trudging through mud just to get through to the end. I'm usually a one-book-at-a-time reader but had to read two others while in the midst of this one just to rebuild my excitement for reading and motivate myself to keep going and hope for the story to pick up at some point.... It didn't.
I'd say my main issue with the book was that it seemed targeted toward an incredibly niche audience, and very inaccessible outside of it. I hate to be the type of person who orders a chocolate cake and then complains because they don't like chocolate, so that's the reason I left two stars instead of zero - because if the topics of religion, sports, classic literature, and alcoholism appeal to you, you might really be really intrigued and engaged by this read, and enjoy the plentiful references! However, if like me you expect that even without pre-existing knowledge of the subject a good work of fiction will still pull you along with interest in the characters and plot, I'd caution you away.
The book follows the Malone family as its members (Dan, Anne, and Pat) all endure their own struggles, yet they really had no significant character growth or many sympathetic qualities to make me care and become attached to any of the characters. There was also seemingly no purpose to them being written as a family outside of vaguely influencing each other's issues through conflict - there wasn't any effort at reconciliation or growth together, and as the reader I wondered if we were even meant to hope for that as an ending? I think this book could be split into three much more engaging separate books - one about a man struggling with alcoholism and MS and providing for his family, one about a woman with a loaded religious background serving as a juror to a reverends trial for attempted murder, and one about a teenager with an affinity for writing trying to figure out his path. Individually those stories could be really interesting to build out. As far as I see it, they stood nothing to gain but everything to lose by being thrown together.
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