Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a coming of age story set in El Paso, Texas in the late 1980s. It's a story of a fifteen year old boy who wants to find out who he is but doesn't really know where to start. I'm more than a little bit in love with this book. It's almost divine.
Aristotle, known generally as Ari, is miserable. Its summer and he doesn't have any friends. He's the sort of character who chooses to be aloof and distant from people. He doesn't seem to want any friends. But one morning he goes swimming and meets Dante Quintana. Dante offers to teach Ari to swim and perhaps because they share "weighty" names or perhaps because of Dante's laugh, Ari accepts. It's the beginning of a friendship which fills the book.
There is drama in this book. Great big, undeniably huge plot turns. I don't want to give too much away about those but for a book which is essentially about getting to the heart of a character, it really does surprise you with action. That being so, it is a reflective book. Ari succumbs to bouts of melancholy. He's in limbo. He's no longer a boy but not yet a man. He lacks control of in life - his mother is often telling him what he should be doing. He still has to go to school and at a later stage he gets a job. He's also divided by cultures - he's Mexican living in America and although Ari feels he is truly Mexican, Dante is constantly seeking to be more so.
This novel is in part about growing into the person you want to be or rather realising who you are and being happy about it. But it's also about communication. Ari's father is a war veteran and keeps his son at a painful distance. Ari desperately wants to know more about his father and to share his pain. Ari also wants to speak about his older brother who is not around. But neither his mother nor father is willing to do so. In contrast to this fragile code of silence, is Dante. Dante who never shuts up, who is stubborn as hell, who lives with his heart on his face, who is impulsive and wonderfully alive.The relationship between the two boys is touching. It's complicated but it's meaningful.
The chapters of this book are really short. I read this book in two days and I am so glad that I bought it. The title captured my attention and it won an award in the US recently so I figured it was worth taking a chance on it. Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe is a rewarding, heart-warming read. The writing is exquisite. Yes, I am definitely more than a little in love with this book. I can't wait to read something else by Benjamin Alire Sáenz.
"One summer night, I fell asleep, hoping the world would be different when I woke."
That's all it took, the first sentence of this beautiful poetical book for me to fall in love with it.
The thing about this book, unlike so many others that I have read, I could relate to it very much. I laughed, I cried, and when I had finished it, I started the book again. Never have I re-read a book just after that I have finished it. Never. And I have read a few books. But this was something else. This was a book that I could open on a day I felt sad, and was convinced the world was against me, and it could make me smile and let me know that i would be okay, that there were going to be bad days, but there would also be good ones.
This is a beautiful book, which I know I will pick up over and over again, just to get that feeling of warmth through me.
Aristotle is 15 and mad as hell at anything and everything, he enjoys being a loner and isn’t that fond of his mom and dad. Dante is the light to Aristotle’s dark, he loves everything, is well liked and openly states that he loves his parents. They meet at the swimming pool and friendship begins.
The book is easy to get absorbed in, I also listened to parts and Lin-Manuel’s voice brings to life these young Mexican boys, you can almost imagine them being real life people. It brings together so many themes seamlessly from growing up, family, mental health and LGBQ, and woven a perfect story out of it.
Saenz has developed 2 main characters that you fall in love with and want the best for, their friendship is such a key factor in the book and they influence each other positively. The act that binded Aristotle and Dante together was so real you could visualise it happening.
The other positive aspect of the book is the 2 sets of parents. Aristotle’s parents although they have flaws and secrets themselves, are always there for Ari no matter what and want him to be happy and simply to have friends. Dante’s parents are accepting both of Dante and Ari and their love shines through the book.
I loved this book and would highly recommend it to anyone looking for a young adult read about growing up with some LGBQ themes.
It had wonderful characterization, and angsty teens who came across as actual angsty teens and not some sort of novelistic cliché. I especially loved that (minor spoiler at the end*) - I had that experience (with being trans) where other people knew before I did, and it is not something I see in fiction a lot. I also liked that the parents were well-rounded people and characters in their own right.
I also really liked the cover and the fact that 1. there was calligraphy on the cover 2. the calligrapher was credited (Sarah Jane Coleman).
But there was one part where I did feel that the book kicked me in the jaw, and not in a good sense. This is a major spoiler, and it is about anti-trans hate crimes:
(spoilers from here onward)
The crime that the protagonist's older brother is jailed for is revealed toward the end as.... he killed a trans woman ("transvestite" - sic) sex worker in what seemed to have been a "trans panic" episode. Now. It is made amply clear throughout the book that the brother committed a real crime, so I was glad that it was revealed to be a real crime and he wasn't innocent. BUT. The fact that a lot of the plot involves the family coming to terms with his being in prison, AND the fact that out of ALL possible crimes, the author had to choose this one, really made me feel uncomfortable. I will also probably not pick up the upcoming sequel, because I really don't want to see more 'coming to terms with' with that. This was just one paragraph in the book, but it really soured me on it. Without this paragraph, it would have been an easy five stars... but this changed the interpretation of an entire plotline, and in a way that felt gratuitious to me, especially seeing as this was the only time trans people appeared in the novel.
and the minor spoiler from above:
* - one of the characters had to be cluebatted about being gay
My usual disclaimer about where I got this book: I bought this one with my own money.
First person perspective quickly became a non-issue once I got a few chapters into this book. This is probably the best first person story I've read.
All the feels. So, so many feels. This story was so profound. I felt like I was Aristotle, or Ari to his friends. He was a lonely, lonely boy, and though I had good friends--great friends growing up, I remember feeling such an aching loneliness at times. I also remember being caught in my own private wars and living inside my head, keeping so many of my thoughts to myself.
Ari was a beautiful boy who was confused not only about himself, but about the entirety of his family. His father returned from the Vietnam war a shell of his former self--not that Ari would know that because he was born after his father returned from the war. It was as if whatever haunted his father was inherited by Ari. He grew up being so bothered by the fact that he didn't know his father because he wouldn't let anyone in. He grew up as practically an only child because his siblings were so much older than him. He grew up hating that his brother, who was in prison, was treated as though he didn't exist. He hated that there were so many secrets in his family, yet he didn't want to share any of his secrets either. There was so much anger and confusion roiling around inside of Ari. And it really came through in the writing. I just wanted to hug him, and I remember being him.
And then Dante came into his life. Dante was such a polar opposite of Ari, but like a light in the otherwise darkness of Ari's mind. They were a strange pair, Aristotle and Dante, but they fit so perfectly together. Dante taught Ari to swim, and became Ari's first ever real friend, let alone best friend. He immersed Ari int art, and books, and a different family life than he was familiar with. Dante made Ari feel things that he didn't want to. He made Dante want to share his mind, which was something Ari just didn't do.
Watching them fall in love... It was amazing and beautifully written. This was like a slice-of-life, but with a plot. I wasn't always certain they were falling in love. The author, in my opinion, keep me wondering. I figured Dante out pretty easily, but Ari, as Dante called him, was "inscrutable". Just when I thought maybe he returned Dante's feelings I was like, oh maybe not. Even when Dante was beaten badly enough to be hospitalized, and Ari found out one of the boys who had done it, he went ballistic and returned the favor to the little punk. Maybe I'm just clueless, but I certainly would destroy anyone who hurt my bestie, and I would definitely have pushed her out of the way of a moving vehicle. That's what besties do, or at least I thought so. Which is why it made sense to me when Ari continually said he hadn't done it on purpose, it had just been a reflex. Protecting people you love-no matter the manner of love--is a reflex. You don't think about it, you just do it. I honestly believed for the longest time, that Ari loved Dante as a friend. Their experimental kiss threw me off because the author tried very hard to make the romantic feelings seem one-sided...or as I said, I'm just clueless.
I'm not doing very well on this review. This book has got me shooketh. It was just a beautiful story, and I loved every page of it! It was sad and funny and exciting and heartbreaking. Dude, this book made me cry. Not full-on ugly cry, but I got misty and that's a good as tears when it comes to me. This book also triggered me a bit. But it was a me-thing. I was reminded, every time Ari thought about his father, of how much I miss mine. And like with many other books on my shelves, I can't believe it took me so long to read this.
I enjoyed this book, but I didn't absolutely love it. I expect this book was still just too overhyped for me as I had expected something much more from this. I had a love hate relationship with the characters, and this is where many of my problems with this story started. First off, I didn't like Ari for the first two thirds of the novel. I found him irritating, immature (in comparison to Dante) and just totally lacking any likeable features. He acts like the world owes him something and I found it hard not to imagine him as just some spoilt little brat. This did change towards the end of the book, which was nice to see as I enjoyed watching his character develop. I didn't totally buy his character change though, simply because his parents and Dante's parents seemed to push him into who he was, and he just suddenly jumped and accepted their view and went along with it, as if everything was all now puppies and rainbows.
Finally, the chapters in this book are wonderfully short. I enjoy books with short chapters as I feel like I'm making progress so much faster. I do think that this made the story feel a little too choppy at times though. Also, I would have loved to also get the story from Dante's perspective as I think this could have really developed the novel more and made it even more interesting and insightful.
Overall, this is a wonderful book that I highly recommend to everyone. I do think you should exercise caution though, over the fact that this book is just too overhyped.
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