We Are the Ants

by Shaun David Hutchinson

[Berls]

This year my brother and I decided we wanted to do some buddy reading. And we knew we'd take it at a slow pace - he doesn't read a ton, even though he enjoys reading and I have lots of other reading going on. And I love being able to talk books with my best friend 3. He's picking the books, which is great because he's exposing me to books I otherwise wouldn't have read or heard of.We Are the Ants definitely falls into that category. I would never have picked it up - its sounds like Sci-Fi (minimally so), which is not my genre. But it had enough to pique my interest so I was in. And I really enjoyed it.

I enjoyed it - but OMG it's brutal. Our narrator, Henry is SEVERELY depressed. And for a lot of really good reasons. He's so depressed that when given the scenario that he could save the world by pushing a button - that's it, simple, push a button - his first response is no. He and everyone else would be better off if the world ended. And I appreciated his complex response to the question of did he want to die? No, but he didn't particularly want to keep living either. He wasn't going to hurt himself, but he wasn't going to try too hard to stay alive either. SO DEPRESSED.

What follows is a complex story of dealing with severe, situational depression - there may be some chemical in there too, but no doubt situational - and the knocks just seem to keep on coming. And yet it's also a heartwarming story because you watch him start to find reasons amidst the struggle to want to maybe think about pushing that button --- choosing to live. Henry is in high school, openly gay, with a boyfriend who recently committed suicide, a father that walked out and a grandmother going through dementia... just to give you a lay of the land. Oh and there's one other thing...

You know how I said it's kind of Sci-Fi? well Henry is called "Space Boy" because he has been getting periodically abducted by aliens for most his life. Returned naked, or just in his underwear, all over their city after hours or days. We spend some time with him with the aliens and I admit, it was an interesting twist to the story. I spent quite a bit of the book wondering if we were going to either find out that the alien abductions are just a reflection of his severe depression or if they were real... and I'm not going to tell you, you get to find out when you read it :)

A great read and I would definitely consider more from Shaun David Hutchinson!