Book Review (Fiction) The Improbable Theory of Ana & Zak

THE IMPROBABLE THEORY OF ANA & ZAK

Brian Katcher

Katherine Tegen Books 2015 328 Pages

There’s a gap wider than the entire breadth of the alphabet between A (Ana) and Z (Zak), the high school protagonists of this Young Adult comedy of escalating errors.

A type A personality, driven overachiever and straight-A student Ana Watson resembles a proto-Margaret Thatcher. The product of a strict upbringing, repressed Ana is meekly subservient to parental diktats while coming across as arrogant and aloof to everyone else.

Happy-go-lucky slacker Zakory “Duke” Duquette, on the other hand, has no clear goals in life and is happy to drift along; indulging his fondness for such geeky pastimes as role-playing games, comic books, science fiction movies and other such manifestations of American pop culture.

Both characters are humanly flawed, somewhat irritating and fairly well-rounded. Not very likable initially, A and Z are reluctantly thrown together for purposes of an inter-school quiz contest. But Ana is not the only one chafing under her parent’s strict regime. Younger brother Clayton, fired by Zak’s accounts of attending past Sci-Fi conventions, goes AWOL from the quiz team’s hotel to visit the “WashingCon".

What follows is a desperate teaming of two very disparate characters to retrieve the errant prodigal with no one in authority the wiser– and so avert feared parental retribution. Naturally, Murphy’s Law reigns and everything that can go wrong does.

Even if the many comic disasters the duo encounter in the course of their quest over a frenetic 24 hours appear to be occasionally unbelievable in their intensity and frequency, the action zips along quite nicely. The author’s amused affection for the tropes of typical science fiction and fantasy conventions comes across and geek sub-culture is nicely portrayed.

There’s a lot of deft situational comedy in this page-turner, but Zak and Ana’s growing attraction feels more like an immature, misplaced crush than a legitimate romance between two almost-adults. Instead of dating happily ever after by the close, they seem more likely to drive each other around the bend.

“Improbable” is a good word to describe their pairing, and this YA romp doesn’t really prove the improbable theory of its central romance.

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