LIBRARY JOURNAL (starred review)

Seventeen-year-old Dougie takes everything literally, lacks social graces and is a loner, except, perhaps, for his one friend, athletic and popular Andy Morrow. But readers know almost immediately that something tragic has happened in the recent past: ' Andy and I had some bad luck with fires when we were kids. We're more careful now.' Other students feel threatened by Dougie's disturbing behavior and react by targeting him with cruelty and violence, which only serves to escalate his descent into unreality, isolation, and obsession. The teen has been working for nearly three years on his model railroad set, using 22, 400 headless matches to build a bridge connecting portions of the 'Madham Line.' As his life deteriorates, this obsession and his nightly talks with Andy are the only things that keep him clinging to normalcy. He resists the help of his psychiatrist and hides his medication. Ultimately, he is forced to remember what actually happened on that fateful night. With its excellent plot development and unforgettable, heartbreaking protagonist, this is a compelling novel of mental illness.

HORN BOOK (starred review)

Gifted in math, and recognizably clever when constructing architectural models (he's building an elaborate railroad system in his basement), Doug reveals that it's human interaction he can't figure out. "I'm a quiet kid, pretty much invisible," he says in a precise, unemotional voice, as this unreliable narrator begins his story. Invisibility is Doug's rationale for explaining a range of rejection, from teacher irritation to peer scorn, particularly from pretty and popular Melissa Haverman, who is disgusted by what readers will recognize as Doug's stalker behavior. But Doug reports one near-perfect relationship, the one he has with his best friend, Andy. Gradually, however, that friendship is revealed to be not what it seems. There are secrets from their past that Doug won't discuss, and hints from their present life that skew his tale. Why is there a strange man in Andy's house? What fuels Doug's increasingly complex rendering of their intertwined initials? What medication is Doug refusing to take? Reading this psychological thriller is much like putting together one of Doug's railroad bridges: connections are being made, but the realities being built may be imitations of life rather than the real thing. The tension comes from entering Doug's private hell and learning what put him there.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review)

The strength of Hautman's painfully sad novel is the wisecracking but clearly unreliable voice of its narrator, 17-year-old Douglas MacArthur Hanson who admits, "I'm not only disturbed, I'm obsessed." One of his passions is "Madham," a town he's building for his model railroad, complete with a 1:800 scale replica of the Golden Gate Bridge. He's also fixated on a pretty girl who clearly wants nothing to do with him. And he's overly reliant on his only friend, Andy Morrow, a fellow junior who is the popular and outgoing yang to Dougie's outcast and introverted yin. Hautman expertly teases out the truth about a tragic incident that occurred "at the Tuttle place" three years earlier, a mystery that propels the story to its horrific conclusion. Dougie is as mathematically gifted and socially inept as the autistic narrator of Mark Haddon's The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but he also has a sophisticated wit. During a lapse in conversation at one of his $95-an-hour therapy sessions, he observes, "We stare at each other for about $1.40." His self-deprecating comments and wry observations make his spiral into self destruction all the more heartbreaking. (One measure of how sympathetically the author has portrayed him is that even though he stalks a classmate, you root for him to get away with it.) Hautman once again proves his keen ability for characterization and for building suspense.

RICHIE'S PICKS

Pete Hautman's INVISIBLE is going to make for one hot booktalk.

"My full and proper name is Douglas MacArthur Hanson. I am named after Douglas MacArthur, the famous general, who was a second cousin of my father's great-aunt. Everyone on my father's side is named after some famous person we are supposedly related to. My father's name is Henry Clay Hanson. Henry Clay was a politician who died before the Civil War. He was my grandfather's cousin's great-uncle. Or something like that. It goes on and on. Since my grandfather's name was George Washington Hanson, I guess I'm related to the father of our country too. Anyway, I'm glad I got named after a general instead of a politician. I think it makes me sound more respectable.
  Usually when I meet someone for the first time, I tell them my full and proper name. Then I say, 'But you can call me General.' Some people find this amusing. Andy always laughs. Sometimes he calls me General, just to tease me. I don't mind. I kind of like it. I am very easy to get along with.
  My mother would not agree with that. She finds me difficult. In fact, she thinks that I am troubled and disturbed. I find it troubling that she finds me disturbing, so she must be right.
  Right?"

  In a spectacular and tense piece of writing that recalls my favorite Cormier novel, I AM THE CHEESE, but with the strings pulled even tighter, Pete Hautman has created a disturbingly real character whose troubled life will cause you nightmares.

  Dougie is a loner who is thoroughly obsessed with the model train world he has created in the basement, with numbers and order, and with the beautiful Melissa Haverman. His best friend and next door neighbor, the popular Andy Morrow, is both a drama kid and the star quarterback on the football team.

  "Do I strike you as troubled?
  Let me give you some facts and figures. I am seventeen years old. I am a junior at Fairview Central. I have never skipped school and I have a 3.4 grade point average. I do not use drugs or alcohol. I have never been seriously ill. I have never broken a bone, lost a limb, or had an organ removed. I am scrupulously honest, except for necessary lies. I sleep well at night. I am not a loner. I have a best friend."

  Do NOT believe him.

  And do NOT start reading INVISIBLE if you have to be anywhere important in the next couple of hours.

KIRKUS REVIEWS

Dougie Hanson is invisible to nearly everyone in this haunting, lonely tale. He's extremely close to his best friend, Andy, even though Andy's a popular athlete. When they aren't together, Dougie works on the elaborate model train he's been building for nearly three years; the 11-foot-long suspension bridge built of matchsticks is nearly done. The bridge contains 22,400 matches in all (Dougie likes both numbers and matches). As the bridge approaches completion, glimpses from Doug's eyes reveal a life more troubled than he admits. His parents worry, his therapist asks if he's taking his meds and a female schoolmate accuses him of stalking. The mentally ill Dougie, who evokes echoes of Faulkner with his unreliable narration, is confronted with truths he can't bear. The deceptively simple prose doesn't keep secrets from its readers, but Dougie's harrowing mysteries are no less tragic for their visibility.

Comments from Pete Hautman

First let me say that I am very pleased that the reviews of Invisible have so far been extremely positive. But I was surprised by one thing: when I wrote Invisible I thought it was hilarious. I mean, it's tragic and sad and has dark underpinnings, certainly. But it's FUNNY! At least, I think it's funny.*

Only the Publishers Weekly review mentions humor.

Maybe I've just got a weird, twisted funny bone. Like the guy who starts giggling during a funeral. Sorry, gang. Jeez.

The other thing that surprised me about certain of these reviews was the bit about Invisible being a "compelling novel of mental illness." I did not set out to write a novel about mental illness. I am not a doctor, I have no training in the field of mental health, and my personal experience with mental illness has been limited.

What I had in mind with Invisible was to write about the experience of being an adolescent--an adolescent boy in particular--amplified to the nth degree. Okay, maybe that could be considered a variety of mental illness. (I spent a good chunk of my teen years fearing that I was going insane. I asked my parents to send me to a psychiatrist. They laughed. I didn't think it was funny. Now, apparently, I think everything is funny.)

All this just goes to show that an author never knows how his or her literary works will be received or perceived. Maybe Dostoevsky thought that The Brothers Karamazov was a gentle farce. Maybe P. G. Wodehouse considered his works to be densely layered tragedies.

Enough--I don't want to come across as this validation-seeker for whom no amount of praise will suffice. I mean, what is more pathetic than an author who who whines over positive reviews of his own work?

*More than a couple people have called me on the "funny" thing. Invisible is NOT funny, they say. It's dark and sad. Well, yes, that's true. But I tried to make the journey--especially in the first three-quarters of the book--amusing. Dougie's perceptions of the people around him are, in my opinion, quite funny. His description of his father, for example. Or the food fight in the cafeteria. Or his take on how girls talk. I wanted the book to be funny almost to the end because if it hadn't been funny, who would want to keep on reading? I believe the final reading experience is driven more by humor than by the mystery/suspense aspects of Doug's story. Without the humor, Invisible would have been a deadly read.