Being God by B.A. Binns

Being God by B.A. Binns

Happy Valentine’s Day from The Pirate Tree to you! Today I’m reviewing Being God by B.A. Binns, an unlikely choice for Valentine’s Day but a good one nonetheless.

17-year-old Malik Kaplan has a knack for making all the wrong choices and for interpreting other people’s actions in all the wrong ways. Even when he makes the wrong choice for the right reasons, such as taking the rap for his best friend’s actions, he has no idea how bitter the consequences will be. Malik’s older brother, a gang member on Chicago’s harsh streets, had bullied him until he died when Malik was eleven—and as a result, Malik refuses to let his guard down at any time, to any one, no matter what. Whenever he’s about to be honest, he hears his brother’s taunting voice in his head, and he closes up.

Malik hurts, though. He hurts silently. He hurts because his brother bullied him…and then died. He hurts because he mistreated the one girl he really loved and now she hates his guts. He hurts because his distant father seems to think he’s scum—which only gets worse when Malik decides that he should confess to the crime that his best friend Cesare committed because Cesare will be charged as an adult and Malik believes the law will go easier on him because he’s younger.

The consequences for this decision are severe—and make Malik hurt even more. He loses his coveted spot as star of the basketball team and the school threatens expulsion. He almost goes to jail but gets community service instead. His father gets rid of the car he had lovingly restored. And he’s not supposed to drink while on probation…the real hardship since Malik is an alcoholic in the making.

Malik hurts—but he never reveals his weakness to anybody. Instead, at every opportunity, he tries to make sure he’s the one on top. In fact, this remains a consistent feature of Malik’s character throughout the book. There are no miracles in his world, and no sudden Road to Damascus scenes of salvation. There are just the long, agonizing consequences of bad choice after bad choice. Malik wants to be a badass. He wants people to fear him. He never likes the results—yet he can’t seem to stop what he’s doing.

I would hate to see this complex novel reduced to any of the “issues” it tackles in nuanced and unusual ways—alcohol abuse, violence, teen pregnancy, gangs, bullying, deteriorating urban neighborhoods. This is not an “issue” novel (thank goodness, I don’t really like reading “issue” novels). In fact, what I love about this novel is that there isn’t a singular, unifying “idea” or “theme” or “truth” that runs throughout it, emphasized in multiple ways. Instead, just like real life—and certainly, real life as teens experience it—the messages that Malik receives and the messages that he sends are confusing, contradictory, and ambiguous.

The one consistent message Malik hears is that he needs to be a different person. The person he projects to the real world is unacceptable to just about everybody. In 2012, after some 40+ years of digesting the idea that all children need to receive positive, affirming messages about self-acceptance, it can be hard for readers to swallow this message. But sometimes it’s the truth. And for Malik, it is certainly the truth. His normal instinctive response to situations is invariably self-destructive. He lies to himself and he lies to others. He lies so much, he has no idea what the truth is anymore.

Until the day there’s a mini-breakthrough…..and then the day there’s another…..and another….in imperfect ways that are wholly believable to Malik’s imperfect character, we see Malik slowly, agonizingly, make decisions for change.

Being God is a sequel to Binns’ debut novel Pull, which won a National Readers Choice Award and was named to the a YALSA Quick Pick for Reluctant Young Readers and the 2011 ALA Best Books for Youth In Detention lists.