Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock - by Matthew Quick (Paperback)

Number of Pages: 304
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
Sub-Genre: Social Themes
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Little, Brown Books for Young Readers
Age Range: Teen
Book theme: Suicide
Author: Matthew Quick
Language: English

About the Book

The "New York Times"-bestselling author of "The Silver Linings Playbook" chronicles a riveting day in the life of a suicidal teen boy. "[T]his novel serves as a literary segue for teens, parents and teachers into an open dialogue on sensitive topics."N"USA Today."

Book Synopsis

In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was--that I couldn't stick around--and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.
Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol. Maybe one day he'll believe that being different is okay, important even. But not today.

Review Quotes

...the novel presents a host of compelling, well-drawn, realistic characters-all of whom want Leonard to make it through the day safe and sound.--Kirkus

Publishers Weekly Best Book

* Quick's attentiveness to these few key relationships and encounters gives the story its strength and razorlike focus...Through Leonard, Quick urges readers to look beyond the pain of the here and now to the possibilities that await.--Publishers Weekly (starred review)

* Quick's use of flashbacks, internal dialogue, and interpersonal communication is brilliant, and the suspense about what happened between Leonard and Asher builds tangibly. The masterful writing takes readers inside Leonard's tormented mind, enabling a compassionate response to him and to others dealing with trauma.--School Library Journal (starred review)

At a time when bullying and gun violence is at the top of the national conversation, this novel servies as a literary segue for teens, parents and teachers into an open dialogue on sensitive topics.--USA Today

Books like Quick's are necessary...We should be grateful for a book that gets kids, and the leaders they'll become, thinking about the problem now.--The New York Times

Full disclosure: you might need tissues to make it through Leonard Peacock, but even if you don't, you'll likely be touched by Leonard's story.--Entertainment Weekly

If only Hollywood could get novelist Matthew Quick to write faster. Everything the Massachusetts-based writer pens seems to be scooped up by the studios as soon as the books are bound.--The Los Angeles Times

Leonard's life teeters dangerously between moments of pain and beauty. A fast read, because I needed to keep reading. I will not forget Leonard Peacock. I love this book.

--Jay Asher, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Thirteen Reasons Why and The Future of Us

Over the course of one intense day (with flashbacks), Leonard's existential crisis is delineated through an engaging first-person narrative supplemented with footnotes and letters from the future that urge Leonard to believe in a life beyond the übermorons at school. Complicated characters and ideas remain complicated, with no facile resolutions, in this memorable story.--The Horn Book

Quick is most interested in Leonard's psychology, which is simultaneously clear and splintered, and his voice, which is filled with brash humor, self-loathing, and bucket loads of refreshingly messy contradictions, many communicated through Leonard's footnotes to his own story. It may sound bleak, but it is, in fact, quite brave, and Leonard's interspersed fictional notes to himself from 2032 add a unique flavor of hope.--Booklist

This is one of the most important books of our time.--A.S. King, Printz Honor author of Everybody Sees the Ants and Ask the Passengers

About the Author

Matthew Quick (aka Q) is the New York Times bestselling author of The Silver Linings Playbook, The Good Luck of Right Now, and three young adult novels, Sorta Like a Rock Star, Boy21, and Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock. His work has been translated into thirty languages, and has received a PEN/Hemingway Award Honorable Mention. The Weinstein Company and David O. Russell adapted The Silver Linings Playbook into an Academy Award winning film. Q lives in North Carolina with his wife, novelist/pianist Alicia Besette. His website is matthewquickwriter.com.