February 14 is Valentines Day, the day for lovers. But it is also a very special day for library lovers, too. And by that I don't mean people who get cheeky under desks and between the stacks.
This is the story of Gurion Maccabee, age 10: a lover, a fighter, a scholar, and a truly spectacular talker. Gurion has been expelled from 3 Jewish schools for acts of violence and messianic tendencies. He ends up in a special lockdown program for the most hopeless cases at Aptakisic Junior High. But in just 4 days Gurion's search for righteousness sparks a violent, unstoppable rebellion. Driven equally by moral fervour and teenage exuberance, The Instructions is hilarious, troubling, empathetic, monumental, breakneck, romantic and unforgettable.
Like an unwelcome long-lost lover who presumptuously returns and resumes residence without the tiniest accounting of possible changes in the interim, my alter ego has been pulling harder on the reins.
