Review by edith38 -- Will of The Hill by Marshall Cobb

edith38 · Post by **edith38** » 21 Nov 2018, 07:37

[Following is a volunteer review of "Will of The Hill" by Marshall Cobb.]

4 out of 4 stars

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Will of The Hill by Marshall Cobb is a story of a teenage boy who is epically lazy. Will's big love and a driving force in life are comic books. His main pain in life is Gertrude, a girl from school who seems to have dedicated here existence on making Will’s life miserable. All Will want's to do is read his comic books in peace, but how can a boy get any peace when Gertrud is around? She had teacher move Will from his best friend's side to the front seat in the classroom and in the school bus. She is always ready to tell on him to the teachers and each day when they go to school she seems to have come up with new ways of torture.

They all live in a small town where things are just a little upside down. Well, actually they are mostly just up. The only school where all the town kids go are on the top of a colossal mountain that can only be reached by a rocket-bus. If you miss the school bus, you are out for the day. While there are rumors of kids occasionally reaching school by forms of an impossible transports (like squirrels) nobody believes them. To make things even stranger, all the parents in the town work in the same lunch box factory. After all, how many creative uses for lunch boxes can people come up with? The only exception is Will’s mother who has a bakery business, the downside of it is that she is home all day and upside is she can provide the best afternoon snacks for hungry boys.

Marshall Cobb has a brilliant and lively way to tell the story. The colorful characters and quirky humor caused me plenty of laughs. The town set up has unique and downright strange things going on that inspire occasional conspiracy theories among people living there. However, kids and parents in the books are believable, three-dimensional characters with plenty of interesting flaws (digging in the nose full-time or refusing to use a soap for example) and logical motivations. The author is using vivid and unorthodox ways to describe characters. For example, the nemesis, Gertrude, “She was a walking invasion of both privacy and space”. The way the main character, Will, thinks about growing up is really illustrative “He was in no hurry to go through puberty, which, as far as he could tell just meant he would get hairy and smelly and begin liking girls.” It tells the reader that Will is on the verge of puberty but also that he has an analytical mind.

A small detail that bothered me in the character description. Will was in multiple places told to be an intelligent person. In this light, his thoughts of moss don't make sense. “He was pretty sure that moss was like mold, and he had definitely seen his share of mold on his various unclean items—plates, bathtubs, tooth-brushes. He had no idea what a lichen was, but apparently, it wasn’t a hedge.” While the description is funny and emphasizes the protagonist’s messy habits (and preference to indoors activities), an idea that a boy in his teenage years doesn’t know how moss looks like seems still unreasonable. Also, as Will stopped using soap and shampoo and only washes with water it's emphasized multiple times that he smells. However, a person would not start stinking when not using a soap. Despite some small illogical details I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

I rate this book 4 out of 4 stars. The book was thoroughly edited and grammatically well written. While I believe anybody who likes quirky humor would enjoy this story perhaps the kids on a middle school level can best relate to the kids on the story.

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Will of The Hill
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