My Year with Hookworms — Brian Carmody

Northern Virginia, 2001. Just as he is about to enter eighth-grade, Andy Blaine, a shy, disenchanted introvert with a perchance for writing, Dune, and Catholic guilt, is horrified to discover he has hookworms, which he regards as a shameful secret he cannot share with his family, especially older sister Odette, the private school lacrosse star whose shadow he struggles to escape. While the family is challenged by much more devastating developments, such as Odette being raped by her boyfriend and their Marine veteran father considering reenlisting to fight in the new War on Terror, Andy is increasingly introverted with an internal problem he knows pales in comparison to the struggles he is impotent to help, and lonely even with the attention of Shannon, the romantically nervous Jewish girl whose affections he is too thick to acknowledge. Though the starting point of intestinal parasites is personal and disgusting, My Year with Hookworms reaches higher ground as a historical snapshot of the uncertain American experience in the wake of 9/11, and a poignant, profound portrait of adolescent secrecy and alienation as one boy tries to find his place in a changing world.Excellent work!-Jesse TuckerThe early bird gets the worm; in the case of this sly and heartwarming retrospective, a warning: to all you bookworms, once these hookworms get their wormhooks in you, you'll never give your other millennial nostalgia-bait books a second look. After /My Year with Hookworms/, everything else is for the birds!-Zack C. - The Minus Men