The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik by David Arnold

 I am a huge fan of David Arnold.  His two previous novels, Mosquitoland and Kids of Appetite, were incredible.  Since I have loved his two previous novels so much, I have been waiting for The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik for a long time.  And I have to say, this one was worth the wait.  Arnold has once again given us a novel that is smart and funny and heartfelt.  He has given us a novel that we will be thinking about long after finishing the last page.  As usual, he strikes a place deep within us.  And as usual, I am blown away by another novel by David Arnold. 

This novel tells the story of Noah Oakman, a teenage boy who has grown bored with the life he is living.  He is bored with his two best friends, his little sister, and his parents.  He feels like he is trapped in a life that isn't the one he wants.  One night at a party, he meets a strange boy who gives him an opportunity to change the things that have become so mundane. 

But when Noah starts noticing slight changes in the world that he has always known, he has to figure out why.  Why have all but a few things changed?  Why have his "strange fascinations" remained the same while everything else around him is just slightly altered?  And when all of these questions are answered, we are left with a stunning novel about family and friends and the ways that we often hurt them without even realizing it.  But even more important than that, this is a novel about how we, as family and friends, are always there for each other despite anything else that may happen.  This novel teaches us to live in the present and to not take for granted the things we have in our every day lives.  It teaches us to live in the in between.  That time in between our birth and our death.  It teaches us that the most important moments are the ones we are living in right now. 

From Amazon:

This is Noah Oakman → sixteen, Bowie believer, concise historian, disillusioned swimmer, son, brother, friend.

Then Noah → gets hypnotized.

Now Noah → sees changes: his mother has a scar on her face that wasn’t there before; his old dog, who once walked with a limp, is suddenly lithe; his best friend, a lifelong DC Comics disciple, now rotates in the Marvel universe. Subtle behaviors, bits of history, plans for the future—everything in Noah’s world has been rewritten. Everything except his Strange Fascinations . . .

A stunning surrealist portrait, The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is a story about all the ways we hurt our friends without knowing it, and all the ways they stick around to save us.