Ironman

Macomb Jr-Sr High School Book Reviews

Ironman
By Chris Crutcher

I have been reading the book entitled Ironman. It is an excellent book and I suggest that you read it. This book is about a seventeen year old guy who frequently finds himself in trouble at school. The reason for this as he later finds out is that he has a problem with controlling his anger.

The bulk of this story is written in the form of letters to Beauregard Brewster’s, the main character and protagonist of the story, Larry King of the Larry King Live show. Larry King is Brewster’s idol, and he write to him everyday and sometimes twice in a day.

Beauregard is a very athletic teen that loves working out and training. He plans his day around his exercise and workouts. Before school, after school, and sometimes due to unfortunate events that might have happened previously he also works out during the school hours.

As a child, Brewster would for the most part obey his parents fully, but one day after he had been playing outside he came in and slammed the door, forgetting that his dad was home for his mid-day nap. His father woke up from this nap and was mad. He came out of his room and told Beau to open and close the door without any noise ten times in a row. Of course Beau did this but on the tenth time he slammed it as hard as he could. His father erupted on Beau and told him that he must do the same routine but only twenty times. Beau refused and called his father a name, not to be mentioned in this paper, and his father decided that a good punishment would be to exclude him from family events until he would do this task. This was the start of Brewster’s anger management troubles.

Almost a decade, and a few suspensions later, Beau was at football practice and made a mistake. His coach, was a very harsh man that would use humility to prove a point, and to try to correct a mistake. He tried this same technique on Brewster. This was not so good of an idea. After being taunted by his coach for a little while, Beau let out all of his steam on him followed by quitting the team. Although this was probably the best move for Beau at the time, it would hurt him in the future. A couple of weeks after this event, Beau was in his coach’s class and forgot to do an assignment. Redmond, his ex-coach/teacher saw this as an opportunity to get back at him for quitting the team. He started mocking and teasing and taunting Beau by saying his full name over and over and over. BEAU-RE-GARD, BEAU-RE-GARD, BEAU-RE-GARD. Beau couldn’t take it any longer. He stood up from his desk and spoke in a very loud voice and said words that can not be said at this time. Then he left the room and went home.
This was yet another time when he had trouble with his anger, but this was far more significant in the story because Redmond later tells the principal to suspend Beau and because this is Beau’s third suspension it means expulsion. Beau’s friend Lionel is a teacher at the school and is friends with the principal. Lionel first talked to Redmond about the punishment and when he could not make Redmond make the sentence a little less harsh, he went to the principal. The principal told him that the only way Beau could come back to school would be either being home-tutored for a couple of months or attending an anger management group.

Beau decides that the anger management group would be much better than home-tutoring. Well, actually he decides that it is the lesser of the two evils. The leader of this group is a Japanese-American who is very short and dresses like a cowboy. Beau finds his personality rather humorous at first, but that soon changes. The members of this group are not the best group of kids you will ever find in one group. They are very “rough around the edges.”

In this group, Beau finds out things about him that he was not sure about. Mr. Nakasaki, the leader, does an excellent job learning Beau’s personality and he can see inside of him. While participating in this group, Beau realizes what is causing his troubles. He cannot take being humiliated by anyone, and worst of all he doesn’t like feeling like the odd one out. Nakasaki teaches him ways to deal with this problem without erupting on the person that is making him feel the way he does.

Before each session, Beau would work out with Lionel’s swim team. Lionel is the coach. The first day that Beau went to morning workouts with the swim team, he beat a big guy on the swim team in eight of the twenty sprints that they swam. Then after all twenty were done, Lionel made the whole team swim again until the guy beat him eight times. Afterwards the swimmer got very mad at Beau and threatens him before another practice.

While enlisted in this group, Beau realized what he needed to do to control his outbursts of anger, and practiced it. Also, he made a lot of new friends while attending. Another plus of this group is that he “hooked up” with a girl. This is the same girl he has been looking at while working out in the gym he works out in. This group turned out to be a great thing for Beauregard Brewster.

When Beau has the opportunity to go back to school, he becomes as good of a student as ever. There aren’t many if any bursts of rage after the group. Mr. Nakasaki did a great job in reaching Beau with his talks and lessons and projects. Beau gained a lot of respect for that funny little Japanese cowboy.

All the training mentally and physically really paid off with Beau. The name of this story kind of gives away the ending, but Beau finally competes in an Ironman competition. He has all of his friends from the anger management group there to help him along. They are there with all that nourishments that Beau needs to get through this great physical challenge.

This was an excellent book. The characters were very well written, described and defined. I would greatly suggest that in the near future you read this very well written book by Chris Crutcher. J.P.

Jr Hi Home Page Library Home Page Sr Hi Home Page