Truth & Honor: Paper Covers Rock by Jenny Hubbard

My avoidance of Jenny Hubbard's Paper Covers Rock (2011) stemmed from my negative associations with John Knowles' A Separate Peace (1959), a required read from my tenth grade honors English class in high school. I never read the book: I didn't have to because the teacher basically did all the work by summarizing it for us each day. What I do remember is that I couldn't relate and so didn't care. A few years ago I tried to re-read it and found myself as equally uninterested.

Last year, while I looked for interesting titles to add to my classroom library, I came across Paper Covers Rock. It piqued my interest but not enough to make it a must-read. And so, it sat in my classroom library for months until a student chose it for her independent reading and wrote a response that propelled me to download it immediately on my Kindle.

Set in 1982 North Carolina (though I'm not fully sure why), Paper Covers Rock has similarities to A Separate Peace: It is set in an all boys boarding school, includes an accidental death, and is narrated by a guilt-ridden narrator, in this case, sixteen-year-old Alex Stromm who aspires to write a Great American novel. As such, the novel is presented in epistolary form as Alex's journal, a mixture of introspection and confession. Complications arise when Alex's new, beautiful, five years older and recent Princeton graduate English teacher, Miss Dovecott, challenges him to use his writing to highlight the truth, which is a no-no for Glenn "Golden Boy" Albright Everson, III, a witness at the scene of the accident.

The story is pretty straight forward and highlights some of the dangers of an insular culture and bigotry. However, it is primarily a coming-of-age story of a boy struggling to differentiate between loyalty and honor.  

Paper Covers Rock is a literary wonder, shocking because it's considered YA. Hubbard's poetic and literary talents are showcased early through the narrator's allusion to Moby Dick, "Call me Is Male," which also serves a significant and symbolic role in the layered and complex narrative structure. It is in that regard that some might argue that the sixteen-year-old narrative voice is somewhat beyond belief. Included are Alex's insights about life as he comes of age, which highlight Hubbard's poetic language: 

No matter how sad or sick or angry or wounded any of us here are, everything (as in: life) marches forward.

Loss of innocence is the knowledge that your brain, no matter how much you cajole it, can never make your heart pure. My brain has been so unfaithful. It has tricked me into alliances I didn't even know I'd formed.

Though short, Paper Covers Rock is a dense, layered, and moody literary gem that will surprise many in its craft.