I received this book for free from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

on September 22nd 2015
Genres: YA, Contemporary
Pages: 336
Format: paperback, E-book
Source: ARC from NetGalley
Goodreads
Four talented teenagers are traumatized-coping with grief, surviving trauma, facing the anxiety of standardized tests and the neglect of self-absorbed adults—and they'll do anything to escape the pressure. They'll even build an invisible helicopter, to fly far away to a place where everyone will understand them... until they learn the only way to escape reality is to fly right into it.
I love AS King. Like, auto-buy, stand-in-line-for-hours, always-sing-her-praises kind of love her. Her books have this perfect balance of realistic adolescent frustration, feminism, magical realism, and intelligent characters to please me as a super-picky reader. So when I saw I Crawl Through It on Edelweiss, I downloaded it immediately.
And then I was afraid to touch it for six months. I knew this AS King was a little different and, judging from early reviews, not as accessible as her other books. While Glory O’Brien’s History of the Future was amazingly bizarre, I Crawl Through It is King’s next step in growing as a writer…all the way to the world of surrealist fiction.
I’ll try to give a synopsis, but with a book like this it almost doesn’t matter. Everything is a metaphor, everything is confusing, and that’s okay. The story is narrated by several characters, but primarily follows four teenagers all attending the same high school: Stanzi wears a labcoat everywhere, Gustav is building an invisible helicopter, China has swallowed herself (and is, thus, a walking stomach), and Lansdale’s hair grows when she tells lies. Add in that someone keeps calling in bomb threats to their school and a man who stands in the bushes handing out letters of the alphabet, it all just sounds simply insane.
However, this book is supposed to be confusing. It’s supposed to be an open-ended maze with no easy answers. Everything is a metaphor, and each reader can apply his or her life experience to the metaphors and get a unique story. Though King does eventually reveal some of the reasons behind these teens’ strange behaviors and their disconnection from the world around them, other elements remain open to interpretation. Yes, this is a story about trauma and mental health and all the horrible horrible shit that so many adolescents face. But there are so many layers here than I think I could find dozens of new thoughts to ponder upon subsequent rereads.
This book is not easy. One motif throughout the story is the references to standardized testing. The bubbles, the stress, the school’s focus on test result above all others. My favorite part of the whole novel was how brazenly King took this on without overdoing it. The test rules all, but King shows us how much of a dog and pony show it really is. To add another layer, the book itself is the counterpoint to the standardized test. It is not singular, it is not factual, it is not easily interpreted. Life is an open-ended question and there are no right answers. Message received.
FINAL GRADE: B
I Crawl Through It is not for everyone. However, if you are looking for more complex YA, this might be a good starting place. Whether or not you enjoy the story, you have to applaud King for treating adolescents like complex, intelligent beings who aren’t just interested in love triangles and getting the boy. This book channels the legacies of Kurt Vonnegut and other surrealist writers and adds something new to YA that can help the interest level gain critical and literary legitimacy. It’s not my favorite AS King novel, but I do like the direction she is moving and I can’t wait to read what she writes next.