Cassie, a seventeen-year-old high school senior, will frustrate anger, impress and scare you. There are no soft edges with this girl, whose father died in war before she was born. Or so we’re led to believe. Cassie is a scarred, damaged, nihilistic genius. Her only friend is blond, beautiful Amy, an activist, athlete and the daughter of the new English teacher in town.
Amy pushes herself on Cassie because she senses the sadness in the girl and Amy, who lost her mom and brother in an accident, needs to help other people in order to help herself grieve. Theirs is a complex friendship. Amy’s father, a frustrated poet, is author P.S. Baber’s most uncomfortable creation. Amy, though admitting he can be a Fascist, claims he’s a great dad. Mr. Cole, in fact, is a monster, a petulant child in an adult’s body. His relationship with Cassie (he always calls her Miss Harper) is soaked in tension. Both refuse to back down in an argument but somehow Cassie feels he’s the only one who understands her.
Terrible things happen in this book, all of it described down to the smallest detail. There is gross unfairness, violence and stunning vengeance. People lie and deceive and squash dreams. This is not just about the boredom of teenagers in a small Kansas town surrounded by flatland. The conflicts go much deeper and can be extrapolated in a larger sense.
There is also pontificating by Cassie that makes her sound much older than seventeen, which sometimes is a fault. There are excerpts from her notebook (she’s a writer), many of which indicate imagination and illness. Like the best writers, Cassie creates her own universe. But in Cassie’s universe, the reader is not always welcome.
Ultimately “Cassie Draws the Universe” is about a victim who is knowingly self- destructive, about power in the classroom, about dangerous trust. You will read of astronomy, evolution, baseball, philosophy, and God, lots of words about God, all pouring from Cassie, spouting hard, implacable beliefs. This book will frighten, challenge and fool you, keep you guessing and turning pages. Mostly, it will exhaust you. But in a good way.
Reviewed by Joe DelPriore for IndieReader