The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik

By: David Arnold
Location: FIC ARN
Genre:Realistic Fiction

The New York Times bestselling author of Kids of Appetite and Mosquitoland brings a speculative twist to his latest novel. The result: an incisive and deeply humane story with the feel of Haruki Murakami for teens.

This is Noah Oakman → sixteen, Bowie believer, concise historian, disillusioned swimmer, son, brother, friend.

Then Noah → gets hypnotized.

Now Noah → sees changes—inexplicable scars, odd behaviors, rewritten histories—in all those around him. All except his Strange Fascinations . . .

Noah Oakman is lost. He's had the same best friends since fifth grade and the same parents since forever. And even though he has changed, he feels everyone around him has stayed the same. When his friends drag him to an end of summer party, Noah meets a kid named Circuit, in whom he senses a kindred disillusionment. Circuit is an amateur hypnotist. Curious (and kind of drunk), Noah allows Circuit to hypnotize him. But when he leaves, everything is a slightly different. Noah swears his friend Alan had a massive collection of Marvel comics, but Alan says he's always been into DC, its competitor. His friend Val definitely gained internet fame through her posts about movies, but now her entire feed is about music. His mother suddenly has a scar on her face; when asked how she got it, she doesn't respond. Only four seemingly disparate things remain unchanged in his life. 
So Noah sets out to discover what these Strange Fascinations have in common, hoping to figure out what happened to him and how he can get back to before.

"To absolutely no one's surprise, I loved this book. 

It's a bizarre, wild ride of a book, and I did not want it to stop. I read it so slowly because I wanted to savor every last delicious word. David has this wonderful talent of writing such strange but true-to-life characters that I feel like I know in real life. The Strange Fascinations of Noah Hypnotik is weird and wonderful and fun and sad and super different, but in all of the best ways. I really did not want to leave the world and mind of Noah, and you won't either. 

So here it starts. I will not stop talking about this book. Prepare yourselves." Stefani