Aristotle and Dante Beginning

"Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe", by Benjamin Alire Sáenz, is a story about the friendship between two boys. 

Aristotle is a loner who at the beginning of the book admits to having trouble understanding and relating to people sometimes and feeling like an outsider in a lot of ways because of that. He has a problematic relationship with his father, a man that because of past trauma seems to have trouble letting anyone in, even his son. This effects Aristotle in a lot of ways, it is part of why I think, and I think that he even mentions this himself, why he has such difficulty with people- until he meets his new friend Dante.

Dante is different. Aristotle is able to relate to Dante. They are not extremely similar to each other, but they do share enough that they are able to sort of balance relating to the other and exploring, learning, through each other. Dante has a great relationship with his father. To Aristotle this is very significant because of his difficulty in understanding his own. He tries to figure out his dad, and maybe even understand his underlying issues with relating to people, and I think that in some ways he uses Dantes relationship with his dad as a sort of model on what he would like for himself. 

This book does a decent job of developing the characters as separate individuals in my opinion. At times to me, the characters feel a little bit flat. Their relationship seems... kind of plastic. Like they are looking at each other like the other person is some precious new interesting artifact... laughing at each other- everything the other person says just about- almost worshiping the other person... but because they are more observing the other person... to me it just does not feel like they are really connecting. Their relationship just feels kind of impersonal in a way- it is too positive, at least so far, it almost feels like two desperate individuals drowning together- holding onto the other person for survival, but then once they are safely back on land- leaving each other because the need is gone. They just feel as if... they are using each other for some sort of surface connection to help them cope with their eccentricities or something. For some reason, their connection just doesnt feel... very deep, very whole. 

But even so, I am enjoying the book. The characters are certainly learning a lot from each other and are developing and growing because of it- thats cool to read. Excited to see where things go.