“The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell” by Robert Dugoni (Adult Fiction)

Samuel James Hill was born with ocular albinism, a rare condition that makes his eyes red. Dubbed “the devil boy” by his classmates at Our Lady of Mercy, the Catholic school his mother, Madeline, fights to get him into, he faces loneliness, alienation, and daily ridicule, especially from David Freemon, a merciless bully who keeps finding new ways to torment him, and Sister Beatrice, the school’s principal and Freemon’s enabler, who in her own subtler ways is every bit as vindictive as he is. Only the friendship of two other outsiders, African-American athlete Ernie Cantwell and free-spirited nonconformist Michaela Kennedy, allows him to survive his trying years at OLM. In high school, Sam finds that nearly every routine milestone—the tryouts for the basketball team, the senior prom, the naming of the class valedictorian—represents new challenges. Even Sam’s graduation is blasted by a new crisis, though this one isn’t rooted in his red eyes. Determined to escape from the Bay Area suburb of Burlingame, he finds himself meeting the same problems, often embodied in the very same people, over and over. Yet although he rejects his mother’s unwavering faith in divine providence, he triumphs in the end by recognizing himself in other people and assuming the roles of the friends and mentors who helped bring him to adulthood. 

I greatly enjoyed reading this book. It was one of the books the Rock Lake, ND, book club read, and then the Rolla book club went on to read it also. For those who like to read, I would very much recommend this book – Christina Hunt

“The Rosie Project” by Graeme Simsion (Adult Fiction)

He’s a socially inept scientist who’s tone-deaf to irony. She’s an edgy young woman whose fallback mode is sarcasm. Put them together, and hilarity ensues in this comedy about a brilliant, emotionally challenged geneticist who’s determined to find a suitable wife with the help of a carefully designed questionnaire, and the patently unsuitable woman who keeps distracting him from his search.

The running joke in The Rosie Project is that “Humans often fail to see what is close to them and obvious to others.” This applies first and foremost to Don, who’s clearly somewhere on the autism spectrum, and just as clearly oblivious about it. He’s also oblivious about his attraction to Rosie Jarman, a beautiful doctoral candidate in psychology who first contacts him to settle a bet about an outlandish genetic question concerning the relationship between testicle size and monogamy.

This was a very interesting and often funny book. Some readers may not enjoy it as the protagonist is on the autism spectrum and it is written from his point of view. I would recommend this book, but caution those readers, or just remind them, that it’s written from the point of view of an autistic person. I plan on reading the other two in the trilogy! – Christina Hunt

Junior Fiction