Losing Joe's Place

Dave Jenkinson is Associate Dean of the Faculty of Education at the
University of Manitoba.

Korman’s fourteenth novel, the fourth for young adults, demonstrates
that he has not lost his touch for creating highly humorous episodic
stories populated by likable, sometimes zany, characters. For Jason
Cordone, Don Champion, and Ferguson Peach, three 16-year-olds from Owen
Sound, Ontario, the upcoming summer holiday period is going to be their
best yet, for they are going to spend it in Toronto, away from parental
control. The trio’s accommodations consist of the
vacated-for-the-summer apartment of Jason’s muscle-bound 22-year-old
brother, Joe, whose only admonition is “Don’t lose my lease!”

Commencing in September with an angry, apartment-less Joe threatening
Jason, the plot returns to June and moves forward, chronologically
showing how Joe has “lost” his apartment. Though friends, the three
boys have personalities that are quite different; the expression of
these differences creates problems among them. For instance, initially
the three youths are employed in Don’s uncle’s factory, but within
days, Jason and Don are declared redundant because “Mr. Fix-It”
(Ferguson) has shown the plant management a better way to automate. The
lads’ precarious financial situation puts them into continuing and
amusing conflict with their penny-pinching, acid-tongued landlord,
Plotnick. “Mr. Wonderful” (Don), who is more interested in chasing
girls than in work, “catches” Jessica Lincoln—but, frustratingly,
she shows a rotating interest in all three of the apartment’s
inhabitants. Finally, Jason’s newly discovered homemaking skills lead
him to take over Plotnick’s deli while the landlord is hospitalized;
the results are quite humorous. Perhaps the book’s most outrageously
funny character is Joe’s seven-foot-tall friend Rootbeer Racinette,
“half-man, half-Bigfoot,” who periodically drops in, with hilarious
results.

Korman fans who have outgrown the antics of Bruno and Boots will be
delighted by this book’s story line and older characters.