Young Man With Camera (2015), by Emil Sher

This review was first published in Resource Links Magazine, “Canada’s national journal devoted to the review and evaluation of Canadian English and French resources for children and young adults.” It appears in volume 21.3.

Young Man With Camera was short-listed for the 2016 Amy Mathers Teen Book Award.

Young Man With Camera

As hard as he tries not to, T–  stands out from his classmates. As a child, an accident resulted in extensive burn marks to his face and neck; since then, he has been bullied mercilessly by Ryan and his group of followers, whom T–  and his friend Sean label “Joined at the Hip.” T–’s parents had tried all sorts of activities to help T–, but the one that stuck was photography. He sees the world through his camera lens, finding beauty in small details that others see as unimportant, or in people whom others see as useless. This is how T– meets Lucy, a homeless woman with an interesting vision of her world. T–’s growing affection for the ostracized Lucy is complicated by the increasingly violent bullying of Ryan and his cronies, ultimately leading to a horrific incident that changes T–’s life forever.

It is hard to know how to approach Young Man With Camera, for a number of reasons. For one, the narrative voice is inconsistent. T–  speaks in metaphor, with a poetic vision of his world that plays with language and image in the way a highly intelligent young adult might; at the same time, though, 13-year-old T–  does not know what irony or behoove mean, and has to ask the teacher he idolizes, Ms. Karamath.

Ms. Karamath introduces him to the work of famous photographer Diane Arbus, whose pictures influence his vision. This connection between the readers’ world and the narrative world is a strength; the development of T–’s artistic ability alongside the reader’s developing understanding of T–  as a person is very effectively executed and almost sufficiently mitigates other problems in characterization.

When T– has photographic evidence of Joined at the Hip’s murderous attack on Lucy, he considers taking the photos to Ms. Karamath, the only adult he trusts. Ultimately, for reasons that are explicit but not convincing, he does not do so, and this is another issue I have with the story. Regardless of the depth of fear he has of Joined at the Hip—T– they poisoned Sean’s dog, Watson, and threatened worse to Sean—is it realistic that T–  would tell no one? Granted, the adults in his life have not been entirely supportive, but again, this is an issue. All the adults we meet, including T–’s mother and father, believe Ryan’s lies and consider (what they interpret as) T–’s criminally anti-social behaviour to be an understandable result of his childhood injury. No one ever thinks to address the issues T–  actually might have. If they are aware of the relationship between his accident and his (presumed) behaviour, why then is there no indication of interventions on his behalf? That question aside, all of his actions could also be interpreted in less damning ways. The notion of T–  having a persecution complex, projecting his abuse at the hands of Joined at the Hip onto others around him, I could understand as a narrative device, but that doesn’t appear to be what is going on. Despite his use of language, T–’s tale is not a metaphor: to have the entire adult world—even ultimately Ms. Karamath—unable to see what is going on, to the extent that T– ends up serving a seven-month incarceration, seems problematically unrealistic.

The intensity of Ryan’s persecution I can accept, as it is presented as excessive even for a typical bullying situation, but when Ryan is found guilty of assault on a member of his own gang, there is no reassessment of T–’s situation at all. Having years of experience dealing with the Canadian school system, including special needs assessments and psycho-educational evaluations, I find it very hard to believe in T–’s journey, in the choices he makes, or the responses of those around him.