Title: JJ Kapock: Early Life
Author: John Gary
Publisher: Westwood Books Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 978-1-64361-435-9
Genre: Fiction
Pages: 293
Reviewed by: Allison Walker

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JJ Kapock is a young boy living in post-World War II America. His family lives in a small, blue-collar community and that is where his adventures take place. John Gary’s novel, JJ Kapock: Early Life, follows JJ’s adventures from a young boy to a growing young man. JJ is a caring boy who likes to help everybody. His motto is, “What are friends for?” JJ is likable, easy going, and good role model for young boys to read about.

Early on in the story, JJ makes friends with a young black boy from Freetown, the community growing alongside his home of Beachwood. Some of JJ’s white friends aren’t sure they want to play baseball with Martin, but when a group of thugs from neighboring Sunrise Beach try to beat Martin up, the boys all jump to his rescue. After that, they are fast friends. John Gary’s book grows more mature, until it’s difficult to tell who his target audience is. JJ leaps from making friends with everybody, to witnessing a girl kidnapped and graphically raped two chapters later. Besides that, in terms of pace, the “JJ Kapock” story meanders along with JJ as he grows from a young boy into a mature high schooler. There’s not the typical beginning, rising action, climax and resolution you expect from a young adult novel. Stories without a clear beginning, middle and end may be appropriate for a children’s book and adult novels, but they’re a challenge for an audience that requires more suspense.

As an adult reading the story, I don’t mind the lack of clear plot or the risqué content, and in fact by the end of the novel, I am emotionally invested in the majority of the characters. They are realistic, and their pubescent struggles are both familiar and endearing. There’s enough small challenges to remain interested in their completion; for example, JJ refurbishing the wood boat he found, then setting up his new friend with a prom date. However, there are also some small spelling and grammatical errors, annoying enough to interrupt a reader, and messy enough to proof check before future publications. The tone of the novel could also use some direction, as it tends fluctuate. Gary proves to be a likable, buddy-buddy narrator, but only when he remembers to maintain that voice in his writing. He sometimes provides an excess of details, then suddenly not enough. For example, on prom night, Gary describes the girls’ dresses and budding bodies, their excited dates and the beautiful event. Later in the same chapter, the students are talking, but there is so much dialogue with so few additional details, you sometimes don’t know who is saying what to whom!

JJ Kapock is altogether a good story, one that has many accolades with its tone, plot and audience. The story is instilled with small town values, like the golf committee hiring local boys to dig drainage ditches. When JJ asks the Committee Chairman why he didn’t hire contractors, the chairman tells him contractors don’t need to pay for college. It’s a peer into the past through the lens of fiction, and often the best of each.