THE DEATH AND LIFE OF BENNY BROOKS

A fifth grader’s tragicomic view of death, divorce, sibling relations, and emotional turmoil.

The acrid divorce is the first trauma as middle child Benny sees his plainly incompatible parents split up and his chain-smoking, self-centered dad failing to be a competent single parent. Then a second blow lands, and he must watch his father lose a battle with lung cancer. Meanwhile, in a Wimpy Kid–style mix of first-person narrative and cartoon drawings that adds twists and punchlines, he records his own growing anger issues and, later, therapy sessions. This heavy material is interspersed with less fraught accounts of, for instance, what it’s like to get a huge loogie in the face from a big brother, fend off the advances of an overly enthusiastic classmate with a crush, always be the last one picked for street games, and get a ludicrously inappropriate plush toy rather than a coveted bike for Christmas. Long’s loosely autobiographical tale is never going to be a happy story, but ultimately the therapy begins to pay off, and a seemingly hostile teacher helps Benny get his schoolwork back up to snuff. Finally, after Benny bids goodbye to his dad at home (where he goes to die) and experiences a rush of big feelings outside the crematorium, the emotional roller coaster glides to a stop in Benny’s closer relations with his siblings and dutiful, if not exactly maternal, mom. Most of the cast appears white.

Sometimes biting, often intense, and marked by moments both of comical awkwardness and grace.