Book Review: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe by Benjamin Alire Sáenz

It's the summer before his junior year, and Ari Mendoza is bored and miserable.  He's not the kind of guy who has a lot of friends, and there's not a whole lot going on in El Paso, Texas.  He doesn't really want to hang out with the other Mexican kids, and he doesn't want to join a gang, although most guys don't want to mess with him.  Ari's not an only child, even though it feels like he is.  His twin sisters are twelve years older, and his older brother Bernardo, eleven years older, is in prison.  Not jail - prison.  So he can't really hang out with him, because Bernardo went away when Ari was four, and no one talks about him anymore - there aren't even any photos of his brother in the house.  It's like Bernardo died.  Also, even though Ari was named for his grandfather, he still has the name of an ancient Greek philosopher.  Not cool.

So Ari heads to the pool, even though he doesn't know how to swim. When Dante Quintana, a boy with a weird voice (allergies, it turns out) and the name of another ancient Greek philosopher offers to teach him, he figures, Why not?  Before long, Ari and Dante are hanging out all the time - swimming, reading comics and books of poems (a new thing for Ari), riding the bus around, and throwing shoes in the street to see whose go the furthest (Dante has a thing about shoes - in other words, he hates wearing them).

Dante goes to a different high school, and his parents aren't like any of the Mexican parents Dante knows - Mr. Quintana is an English professor and Mrs. Quintana is a psychologist.  Dante himself is also unlike any person Ari has ever known.  Unconventional, enthusiastic, fierce, open and unashamed of tears, joy, or being crazy about his parents, Ari isn't sure what to make of Dante and his family.  His family doesn't talk about stuff, especially his dad.  A quiet man who doesn't talk about much, especially his experiences in Vietnam, Ari thinks of his dad as inscrutable.  So Dante and his parents' openness with each other is a new thing, a thing that makes Ari kind of uncomfortable, but something he thinks he could get used to.  And the thing is, he likes Dante.  A lot.

But when both Ari and Dante are involved in a terrible accident at the end of the summer, everything changes.

This has been on my reading list forever, and I can't believe I didn't read it sooner!  Aristotle and Dante cleaned up during awards season this year - scoring a Printz honor (for literary merit), the Belpré medal (for best book portraying the Latino experience) and the Stonewall award (for best book portraying the GLBT experience).  I just wanted to wrap Ari and Dante up in a big hug of It Gets Better, although their parents are already doing a pretty awesome job of doing that too.  Actually, both Ari and Dante's parents win big time kudos for fabulous parenting - even when they screw up (which parents do!), you know they're trying to do the right thing with their sons.  Filled with all the happiness and the horribleness of being fifteen and not knowing who you are or who you are going to (or want to) become, much less what you want to do that afternoon, this novel is built of all the moments and thoughts that make up a friendship as two boys grow up.

Megan
(who is planning to start Etiquette & Espionage by Gail Carringer soon - a boarding school for spies on dirigibles?!  Sign me up!)