Dear life you suck

Sign up for our newsletters! Cricket Cherpin has lived at the Naskeag Home for Boys for the past eight years. He was sent to the Catholic home in rural, northern Maine when he was taken away from his neglectful, drug-addicted parents at the age of nine. This sense of responsibility is his excuse for his frequent fights and suspensions from school.

I feel a bit like an explorer right now. As a ward, Cricket lives in a Catholic home for boys in Maine run by nuns. He is constantly getting in trouble at school for fighting. Yet, he sees the fighting as justified because he is trying to help the little ones, or the younger boy orphans. You see, Cricket is the oldest one at the home so the others look up to him and see him as a sort of protector. After getting into a fight, Cricket finds himself in trouble with the school.

He is constantly getting suspended at school for fighting, and despite the efforts of some of the adults in his life, he believes his best prospect after school is to become a drug dealer. He cares for the Little Ones, younger kids at his orphanage who look up to him, and despite grumbling about it, enjoys entertaining them with wild stories. Salinger said it before, and quite frankly, said it better. Blagden creates a distinct narrative voice for Cricket, one that presumably is meant to be snappy and witty and to convey just how pissed off he is at life. Take the opening paragraphs for example:.

Thank you! Seventeen-year-old Cricket Cherpin yes, his real name has lived in a Catholic orphanage in Maine since he was 8 and his little brother died. Although Cricket is deemed a bully, his punches keep younger boys and school nerds safe. In this debut, his first-person narration, loaded with biting sarcasm and never-ending nicknames for his oppressors, reveals the push and pull of his soul.