I Am the Cheese

Robert Cormier's I Am the Cheese is a short and intense thriller told from the first-person perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy (Adam Farmer). At the start of the novel, Adam embarks on a mysteriously long bike ride from Massachusetts to Vermont in search of his father. But over the course of the novel a much more complex story emerges (one that a review should not reveal). It's an intelligent and disturbing novel, and Cormier creates real suspense as new information is slowly revealed. Younger readers will probably enjoy this even more than adults; Cormier captures adolescent angst and trauma quite well.