Today’s book is one that I found really fascinating but one that is also rather disturbing in some ways. Nothing But The Truth is a young adult novel by Avi and tells the story of Philip Malloy. It opens with Philip finding out that he is unable to try out for the high school track team due to his D in his eighth grade English class. Convincing himself that the teacher just doesn’t like him he tries to find a way to get transferred out of her class. Since she is also his homeroom teacher he uses that to his advantage by acting out in homeroom. Instead of being respectfully silent during the morning playing of the national anthem Philip starts making noise. When he is sent out of class to the assistant principal’s office he claims he was either humming or singing along with the national anthem. After not being transferred he continues for several more days until he gets suspended for being disruptive. However, when he tells his parents and later the neighbors and newspapers he claims he was suspended for singing along with the anthem and that he was not being disruptive at all.
The reason that I find this book fascinating is that it explores just how quickly some minor incident can get blown all out of proportion. Philip wants to get a better grade in English so he can try out for the track team but he doesn’t ask his teacher how to improve it and instead decides he will find a way to get transferred out of the class. Not the smartest thing to do but a typical teen thought process with the only downside being his method of doing so. Things only start to go sideways though when it gains media attention as it quickly snowballs into the teacher and school being unpatriotic and Philip only wanting to be patriotic when in reality that had nothing to do with what had happened. This book is definitely a lesson on how things can get distorted and exaggerated in the media and how it can quickly lead to a lot of unintended consequences. The blowback from Philip’s actions, not only on himself but also on his teacher, were pretty severe and were due in large part to the media attention. While this plotline was interesting the format of the novel really helped amplify the plotline. I say amplify because the story is all about how things get misinterpreted and distorted and the format really helps show that. The novel is not a straightforward narrative like most books and it is not told in poetry like quite a few others. There is no narrative structure in the traditional sense as the story is told through letters and newspaper articles and memos and journal entries with the occasional dialogues. Because of this structure we, as readers, have no insight into what the characters are actually thinking about what is going on. We see only how the story of what happened changes through the documentation that is generated by the event. It creates this really interesting perspective on the story. Honestly, I rather enjoyed the story and found the format rather intriguing to see. Overall, a great book and one that I am happy to give 4.5 out of 5 stars.
I said at the beginning this is a young adult novel and I would also consider it to be realistic fiction. If you don’t mind that genre and fall in that age range I would highly suggest that you read it as it is a really thought provoking piece of literature. I am also going to go out on a limb here and say that, in my opinion, everybody should at least consider reading this book. The ideas and thoughts that it covers over the course of the novel are things that people should really consider when in a situation like what Philip was in. People often forget how media coverage can distort a story and in our day and age that is something that people need to be reminded of from time to time and I think this book can help do that. I hope you consider trying it out and feel free to share your thoughts on it in the comments as I am curious what you might think of it.