Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick

This book is about a sort of sick quest - a quest that will involve Leonard saying goodbye to the people he cares about the most in this world. He is smart and goofy and strange and severely broken. Quick creates a character that as much as you might want to hate and fear because of what his plans are, you can't help but start to love him. And that is the start of what left me laughing and crying well after midnight on a work night. Leonard is a poor soul with a few secrets. Smart and goofy and strange and severely broken Through Leonard, Quick urges readers to look beyond the pain of the here and now to the possibilities that await. Its greatest irony is that, despite Leonard's commitment to his murder-suicide plan, he appreciates and values life in a way that few do.

Quick's attentiveness to these few key relationships and encounters gives the story its strength and razorlike focus. First, though, he will visit the important people in his life: an elderly cinephile neighbor, a musically gifted classmate, the teacher of his Holocaust studies class, and a homeschooled girl who passes out religious tracts in the train station. Foreseeing only more unhappiness and disappointment in life (and harboring a secret that's destroying him), Leonard packs up his grandfather's WWII handgun and heads to school, intending to kill his former best friend and then himself.

Leonard Peacock is another such individual, a teenager who feels let down by adults and out of step with his sheeplike classmates. Quick's books typically revolve around characters who don't fit in, don't understand their place in the world, and face daunting obstacles.

Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock by Matthew Quick