Benjamin arrives with his parents for a tour of Roaring Orchards, a therapeutic boarding school tucked away in upstate New York. Suddenly, his parents are gone and Benjamin learns that he is there to stay. Sixteen-years-old and with two failed suicides to his name, Benjamin must navigate his way through a new world of "popped privileges," "candor meetings," "morning meds," and "cartoon brunches"—all run by adults who have yet to really come of age themselves. The only person who comprehends the school's many rules and rituals is Aubrey, the founder and headmaster. Fragile, brilliant, and prone to rage, he is as likely to use his authority to reward students as to punish them. But when Aubrey falls ill, life at the school begins to unravel.
Benjamin has no one to rely on but the other students, especially Tidbit, an intriguing but untrustworthy girl with a "self-afflicting personality." More and more, Benjamin thinks about running away from Roaring Orchards—but he feels an equal need to know just what it is he would be leaving behind.
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"We meet Benjamin smashing his feet into the cracked windshield of his parents Oldsmobile. And he isn't even put into the violent kids group at The Roaring Orchards School for Troubled Teens. Benjamin has been suicidal in the past, but it seems like any kid can be thrown into this jigsaw puzzle of a mansion, just as long as someone pays tuition. Benjamin is writing his story fifteen years after getting out of the school, when he visits the decaying and molding mansion, left abandoned. Aubrey started Roaring Orchards when he was fired from his other school: for not agreeing with disciplining children for bad behavior by kicking them out of the school. He thought that didn't teach them anything. So Aubrey started his own school in upstate New York, both for kids with mental illnesses and violent prone students. The kids can do anything and not get kicked out for it: violence that adults would be in prison for. The school has questionable, shady practices: one example is "ghosting", treating a student like they do not exist -- no talking to them, no looking at them. It seems to me like that would alienate a student already having a tough time. When Aubrey's health starts to fail, so does the school.
The cover of the book does the best at describing the personality of the book: The humor is quiet yet desperately sad in tough situations, much like the comic book panel pictures that feature haunting and sad images on the cover. One example from the cover is Burn Victim, the silent witness, a teddy so well-loved that it is wrapped in white felt. Really, no other cover could have worked better. This book reminded me of Lauren Groff's 'Arcadia' for many reasons: mainly for involving communities that mean well but ultimately become abusive. Aubrey wants to help these kids, but sometimes too much is too much. Aubrey says to the faculty members: "I hear the way you laugh at these kids, the way you laugh and belittle them, make them the butts of your stories and jokes. ... You get nervous and you laugh; you get angry so you make fun and laugh. ... Yet see how sober the students are. They're so funny but so rarely laugh." (page 279) Many of the faculty are having similar problems as the students they should be role models for. Benjamin sees the way faculty treats students in a different way: "Seeing us as objects of fun let the faculty imagine we were somehow protected, I think, as comic figures are able to survive all kinds of harm." (page 116) I thought this was interesting, because it seemed the same way that Josefson was treating the book and the students within it, and seems like the moral of the story, the point of the book. Dan Josefson says in the after word that he worked for a while in a school. This is Josefson's first novel, and if it is any indication how long it took to get this published, there is a blurb from David Foster Wallace who passed away in 2008. In an interview in the back of the book, it is mentioned that this may be the last book David Foster Wallace gave a blurb for, or even the last book he may have read before his death. Which gets kind of eerie, considering the plot of 'That's Not A Feeling'. It's pretty dang sad and disappointing that none of the bigger publishers would pick this book up, but thankfully there are indie publishers like Soho who do. It kind of makes you wonder how many bookish gems are out there, not getting a chance to be discovered. I really don't want to miss books like this one. I liked this desperately funny, yet hauntingly sad book."
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C (4 out of 5 stars)