Quagmire Tiarello Couldn’t Be Better by Mylisa Larsen

Quagmire Tiarello is the appropriately-named hero of this story of a young man with a difficult mother.

Quagmire Tiarello Couldn’t Be Better by Mylisa Larsen. Clarion (HarperCollins), 2024, 226 pages.

Reading Level: Middle Grade, ages 10-12

Recommended for: ages: 12-16

Anyone who would name their kid “Quagmire” has to be quirky. But Quag’s mom is more than quirky; by the time he turns 14 she is seriously bipolar. He adjusts with his own form of quirkiness, taking a sardonic view of the world around him where all is “Perfect. Couldn’t be better.” As his story opens, he’s just ended eighth grade with a bang, having participated in a jazz band protest against school budget cuts that got him in trouble. Cassie Byzkinski, his partner in crime, is now embarked on a summer project at Art Camp and wants Quag’s technical gifts to be part of it. If it was just Cassie, he’d be all in. But the other arty types involved in the project trip his sarcasm control and he ends up alienating everybody.

Cassie is open to second chances and Quag is working toward reconciliation when Mom happens. She picks him up after camp to drive to Buffalo for a hot dog. But that little jaunt turns into a cross-country road trip, with Mom spinning ever-more wildly out of control until she drops him off—literally—in the middle of Nebraska. He has her phone and the phone has a number that apparently belongs to her brother (her brother?). With no other option at hand, he punches the number, and Uncle Jay eventually drives up in an old pickup.

From a suburban apartment in upstate New York to a dairy farm in the Midwest: Perfect.

This boy needs grounding, and he never knew it. He needs something real and beautiful under the ironic surface of his life, and he will get it. Birds are a recurring motif, from waddling ducks in his hometown park to the elegant sandhill cranes of the prairie, suggesting his guarded outlook beginning to unfold and take wing; from “stupid” as a frequent modifier to something approaching wonder. Quag is an enormously sympathetic character, so representative of young people raised by rootless or careless or mentally ill parents. He has walled in his hurt and cast-ironed his confusion, and unless something gives he may grow up to be as rootless and careless. But there’s always reason to hope. His sometimes comic, often harrowing journey will come to a satisfying conclusion, and it’s worth the ride.

Bottom Line: A sharp, perceptive, and rewarding novel about redemption.

Also at Redeemed Reader:

• Reviews: Author Mylisa Larsen has been compared to Gary Schmidt, and Quagmire Tiarello bears more than a passing resemblance to a Schmidt hero. See The Labors of Hercules Beale, Pay Attention, Carter Jones, and Just Like That (all starred reviews). Also Okay for Now and The Wednesday Wars.
• Reflections: Gladys Hunt on Disappearing Mothers. And Betsy wonders, Are Absent Fathers a Problem?

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