Last Night I Sang to the Monster, written by author Benjamin Alire Sáenz, readers enter the head of alcoholic depressed teenager Zach who wakes up in bed three of Cabin 9 at a rehab center without any memory of how or why he was there.
He starts off as a straight A student who plans to make something out of his life, and suddenly he starts down the road of drinking and drugs. To make matters worse, he doesn’t want to remember what got him put in the rehab center.
Since the main setting of this book is a rehab center, it doesn’t have the air of a happy-go-lucky attitude. So if you are looking for a book that has only happy endings, this isn’t the one. Yet, even though the story tends to lean towards more the depressing side, it is a book that creates an aura of hope and what it really means to be a family.
Instead of focusing on the main character like most cliché realistic fiction books tend to do; the secondary characters also get to share their stories and feelings. Rafael, one of Zach’s roommates, is a 50-year-old alcoholic who suffers from depression, and serves as a type of father figure to Zach. Sharkey, another roommate, is a 20-year-old rich recovering drug addict who serves they type of the big brother figure for Zach.
Both secondary characters are strong contributors to Zach’s character growth, but they also experience change. It also breaks the barrier by making character Zach the only teenager in the book. Sáenz does a fantastic job of creating an entire book of dynamic characters that the readers can fall in love with and not get confused.
Sáenz concentrates on the idea of a somewhat theological viewpoint of God that Zach has. Several times the reader will find Zach thinking of how “God creates people and writes something on their heart. And on his heart God wrote alcoholic.” Zach brings this up several times throughout the book, and Sáez is able to create a type of debate on the aspect of God and the role he plays he in daily life.
If one negative thing has to be said about this book, it would be the use of the words “wigging out.” Zach uses this phrase nearly every other page of book, and it does not go with the dialect of the time. The book was published in 2013, and the term “wigging out” is not a modern phrase. This phrase almost causes a confusion of the time period that the author was trying to set.
Overall, this book accomplishes creating the personality type of someone who suffers from a mental illness. The book doesn’t romanticize it, and Sáez is able to establish an emotional war within the reader. From sadness, to happiness, to flat out crying for a good 20 minutes, Sáez accomplishes what every author hopes to do, make the characters real to the reader.
