A review by lekoweko
The Vast Fields of Ordinary by Nick Burd

3.0

About ten months after reading this book, I'm only now starting to realize why I liked it. True, it's your run of the mill/coming of age/typical suburbia young adult novel. It doesn't get particularly heavy though it has that piquant teenage angst throughout. But I don't like this book because of all those things. Why I liked it was because it brought these images into my head. Perhaps I should start with the title: The Vast Fields of Ordinary. I can just see how that relates to the typical, sheltered American teen. I can see an upper middle class house with all the furnishings of luxury and none of the depth. I can see driving through corn fields at night just to escape the routine, or rather, the ordinary. That's why I liked it. In a perfectly typical young adult novel it was able to capture all the magic and disenchantment of American suburbia.