Review: Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

Sixteen-year-old Austin Szerba interweaves the story of his Polish legacy with the story of how he and his best friend , Robby, brought about the end of humanity and the rise of an army of unstoppable, six-foot tall praying mantises in small-town Iowa.

To make matters worse, Austin's hormones are totally oblivious; they don't care that the world is in utter chaos: Austin is in love with his girlfriend, Shann, but remains confused about his sexual orientation. He's stewing in a self-professed constant state of maximum horniness, directed at both Robby and Shann. Ultimately, it's up to Austin to save the world and propagate the species in this sci-fright journey of survival, sex, and the complex realities of the human condition.

I don’t know which is more bizarre. Giant praying mantises taking over the world, or being in a horny, teenage boy’s head for nearly 400 pages (while giant praying mantises take over the world). But that is Grasshopper Jungle in a nutshell, and I loved it! Our narrator is Austin Szerba, and he takes us through every single, seemingly insignificant event leading up to the end of the world. From getting beat up, to breaking into the antique shop, to finding shelter in an underground silo. It’s a crazy week, but someone’s got to tell the story.

I’ll start with my main complaint in regards to Grasshopper Jungle: the narrative style. I never got use to it, but I was so engrossed in the tale, that I didn’t knock a star off for it. Austin, literally, tells us everything whether it’s relevant or not. History is his passion, so he doesn’t miss any detail. This is all good, and provides for some entertaining anecdotes, but it also made some parts drag. He also repeats several things way too many times throughout his historical account of the end of the world. The writing is also quite stiff and formal feeling, despite being peppered with f-bombs and plenty of other colorful language.

Other than that, Grasshopper Jungle is a blast! It definitely reminded me of a SyFy Channel movie. Even though Austin is our narrator, he’s kind of omniscient. He tells us what’s going on all over the city though he clearly can’t have known all of this, or even found it out later. I think it works, since in those cheesy movies we’ve got the main characters, plus random cut-scenes of the monster eating the extras. That is exactly what the Unstoppable Soldiers (the giant bugs) were doing.

The plot was a lot of fun, but my favorite part of Grasshopper Jungle was Austin struggling with his sexuality and being so open about it. He has a girlfriend, Shann, but he also gets thoughts and feelings about his best friend, Robby. Some of these thoughts include just him and Robby, others are about Robby and Shann. And of course, being a horny teenage boy, he thinks about threesomes. He doesn’t know if he’s gay, bisexual, or just “experimenting.” He just knows that he loves Shann and Robby. I loved how in the end his sexuality was just left as something open or fluid, rather than having to make a choice.

In the end, I really liked Grasshopper Jungle. The writing did annoy me throughout, but I think the story more than made up for it. I especially loved that epilogue!

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