Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock

By: Matthew Quick

Narrated by: Noah Galvin

Length: 6 hrs and 19 mins

Publisher's summary

Audie Award Finalist, Teens, 2014

In addition to the P-38, there are four gifts, one for each of my friends. I want to say good-bye to them properly. I want to give them each something to remember me by. To let them know I really cared about them and I'm sorry I couldn't be more than I was - that I couldn't stick around - and that what's going to happen today isn't their fault.

Today is Leonard Peacock's birthday. It is also the day he hides a gun in his backpack. Because today is the day he will kill his former best friend, and then himself, with his grandfather's P-38 pistol.

But first he must say good-bye to the four people who matter most to him: his Humphrey Bogart-obsessed next-door neighbor, Walt; his classmate Baback, a violin virtuoso; Lauren, the Christian homeschooler he has a crush on; and Herr Silverman, who teaches the high school's class on the Holocaust. Speaking to each in turn, Leonard slowly reveals his secrets as the hours tick by and the moment of truth approaches.

In this riveting audiobook, acclaimed author Matthew Quick unflinchingly examines the impossible choices that must be made - and the light in us all that never goes out.

©2013 Matthew Quick (P)2013 Hachette Audio

Beautiful Story!

This will make you laugh, cry, get angry, sympathize with the characters. This is an amazing read.

Required Read

Narrator did an excellant job; as good as any adult I've heard. This story should be a required "read" for every person.

Whooo! What a wonderful ride

First I am a big fan of Silver Linings Playbook. This book is an fantastic ride on imperfect lives that make us think we should LOVE people. We never know how our kindness and simple acts of love are needed by strangers.

The reader has the perfect voice for the teenager of the story. I love the kindness of the teacher and reminds me of the great teachers of my past. I will be recommending this book to all I know and the teenagers in my life to remind them they don’t need to know all the answers we contintue to learn our whole lives.

Amazing

Overall just a great read!! I am definitely happy with this book and am aching for more

I'd like to buy the world a coke (and this book)

The author that gave us that warm-puppy of a novel, The Silver Linings Playbook, once again has us malleable putty in his compassionate hands. Quick has proven to be a novelist with some insight into those behaviors that sometimes prevent us from seeing the humanity that lies beneath them. In spite of the straight forward set up (you could almost say manipulative in the nicest way) he has the ability to make us challenge our comfortable conceptions and crank our necks a little harder to get a wider view, and as a reader, that interaction impresses me.

I worked with hundreds of Leonard Peacocks in my profession; kids struggling to communicate beyond their hurt in a world that seems to make no sense to them. My background challenges my objectivity rating this book, but I can say that it is one of the better books I've read describing a particular troubled teen's thought process, so I'll approach this rating from that POV. It does that with sympathy and authenticity, with some excellent insight that has been very responsibly supported by several professionals (noted in the epilogue). On the other hand, I also worked with the kids that were locked up during their therapeutic hospitalization to prevent them from carrying out pure evil -- and that is apples to these oranges. This is not a textbook about personality disorders, or a fictionalized look into the mind of Columbine-like attackers at all. I doubt (I hope) Quick intended this border-line warm-fuzzy book to examine behaviors on that level, and it would be a naïve disservice to lump this into such a category.

This is a heart-touching look at one of those *troubled oddballs*. As Leonard counts down the hours to carrying out what he feels is a necessary catastrophe, his narration reminded me of a similar confused and misplaced childish bravado...
"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him "WILD THING!" and Max said "I'LL EAT YOU UP!" [Where The Wild Things Are; Maurice Sendak]
There's obvious pain and confusion beneath Leonard Peacock's words.

Reviewer L. Gutzman said he thought this should be required reading--a wonderful sentiment that would makes us all a little more aware and compassionate. This is a great story -- ignore the NY Times glass-half-empty mention of this book making a *social commentary* and just value, maybe even share, the view the story leaves you with. You'll be a wiser and kinder person.

As popular as a waterlogged dog at a Sunday social

Lenny Peacock is a high schooler with a dreadful secret and a serious shortage of self-esteem. He's not a bad kid, but he's as popular as a waterlogged dog at a Sunday social. Today, he plans to murder a former friend and kill himself.

I bought this short novel when it was on sale because I really enjoyed the author's Silver Linings Playbook. "Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock" is geared more toward teens. While I used to be one, and thus both appreciate and hate that place of awkwardness and angst, if magic made a time machine, I'd go back to 21, not 16.

I should have read the signs, and known I would find this book mediocre.

You won't forget Leonard Peacock!

I had no idea what to expect from this book and was very pleasantly surprised. Leonard Peacock is a young man we all can identify with, either from our own experiences or from someone we knew while we were in high school. With no family support whatsoever, he is struggling to come to terms with his self-worth and has some very big decisions to make, which will be either life-shattering or life-affirming. Join Leonard on his 18th birthday to see what happens. This book elicits a lot of different emotions--sadness, anger, frustration, and maybe even some joy. It is a story that will remain in my mind for a long while.

Excellent, believable narration adds to the experience.

Highly recommended.

Meh

This book was really hard for me to get into. In fact, I almost deleted it about a third of the way through. It finally caught my attention and I was very glad I continued listening. But the ending was not satisfying. I don't feel like the story was wrapped up very well and I have so many more questions. The narrator was great though. I really enjoyed his interpretation of the characters.

Really? No Ending?

If you could sum up Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock in three words, what would they be?

an amazing book that should have gotten all 5 stars from me but does't because the author decided that an ending was not necessary. What a shame...

What was one of the most memorable moments of Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock?

The whole entire book was memorable. Seriously a great book, but I think the most memorable moment was when he went to make the pancakes because his mother got too busy to do it for him.

What about Noah Galvin’s performance did you like?

Noah Galvin has the perfect voice for all books that are being narrated by a teen. In fact, I think that if you have a book that is narrated by a young man, it should be mandatory that Noah performs it. It's not just his voice that makes it so good, it's the way that dramatizes, but does not over do it.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

Yes, the end, when I realized that there was no ending to it.

An emotional rollercoaster

Great story, and exquisite performance from the reader really drew me in. Listening to this felt so real, as if I was inside LP's head. I almost started crying several times during the last chapter.