BOTHERATION
Part Three: Epiphany
by Vito DiBarone
This third installment of DiBarone’s YA series finds a teenage genius struggling with reality while trying to protect Earth from a viral threat.
The first day of Matty Weber’s junior year at a Scotsborough, California high school is peculiar, to say the least. When lunchtime rolls around, he’s eating alone in the cafeteria. As Matty walks around the school, there’s not a student in sight. He eventually runs into his best friend, Gabriel Mason, and Gabriel’s brand-new girlfriend, Stephanie, and learns that a morning announcement has declared school canceled for a month; apparently, there’s a pandemic underway. A maybe-sentient “sort of robot” (which Matty has previously interacted with) runs a pandemic simulation at the school, but Matty inexplicably doesn’t see the same simulated images that Gabriel does. He suspects someone is altering his perceptions; sure enough, he suddenly wakes up in a room with no idea of how he got there. He’s now the “new kid” at the Stanford University Graduate School for Advanced Study, set to work on finding a vaccine for Earth’s deadly new virus. Matty earns graduate degrees in virology in record time and collects samples around the world, from Utah to Turkey to India. The situation somehow involves his biological father, his mother, and his stepfather, all of whom are estranged from each other in different ways. They prize his brilliant mind, but is it only because of the virus? Or are they harboring a secret agenda? Matty is understandably confused and often can’t be sure if he’s taking part in reality or if all of the weird developments happening around him are merely a dream.
As in preceding installments of the series, this novel thrives on abstruseness. Readers will be as perplexed as Matty perpetually is as he intermittently pops into new scenes and new settings. Other characters notice this, too: “But how?” Gabriel wonders, upon realizing he and Matty are in Turkey. “A moment before, we were somewhere in Utah, and minutes before that, I was in Scotsbourgh...” Matty doubts his reality so frequently that readers may continue to do so in the rare moments when he doesn’t question anything. As always, Matty displays a natural charm, delivering scientific explanations or musings that show no sign of conceitedness or condescension. He’s very relatable; a teen sometimes caught in the middle of feuding parents, he’s quick to tears, and his nerves sometimes leave him with sweaty, stinky armpits. In the same vein, this oft-baffling narrative world isn’t so unfamiliar, including the varied responses people have to the pandemic. DiBarone skillfully links this novel with the earlier installments, which deepens the mystery of what Matty is experiencing as people hide things, form top-secret plans, and run ambiguous “projects” or “operations.” The final act takes a sharp turn, sprinkling SF and paranormal elements into the narrative. Frustratingly, this offers little in the way of clarification, and it’s hardly surprising that yet another sequel waits in the wings.An engaging entry in this ongoing, playfully puzzling saga.