After creating a controversial and hugely popular website, teenager Josh
Swensen becomes trapped inside his brilliant creation and must find a
way to remain anonymous.
I am lying on my bed doing my homework in Greek and Latin roots for
Advanced English. 'Ped' for foot, 'homo' for man, 'nym' for name. I sit
with the dictionary in front of me, coming up with as many words as I
can to complete the assignment. Pedestrian, homicide, pseudonym . . . I
have more than thirty of them. By accident--that's always how these
life-changing things happen--I connect two halves that don't seem like a
word until I look it up. 'Pseudo, ' false; and 'cide, ' to kill =
pseudocide. To pretend to kill (yourself).
I stare at the word for a good long time. Homicide, suicide, genocide:
these are words you can find in the newspaper every day. But pseudocide
. . . now here was something different. My mind wanders from my homework
to the blue cotton threads of my bedspread. Pseudocide. A way to start
again as someone completely new, a way to burn the old self and try on a
new one.
Josh Swensen isn't your average teenager--when he observes America, he
sees a powerhouse of consumerism and waste. He's even tried to do
something about it, with his controversial start-up website. But when
Josh rises to messiah status of the internet world, he discovers that
greed and superficiality are not easily escaped. Trapped inside his own
creation, Josh feels his only way out is to stage his death and be free
of his internet alter-ego, Larry. But this plan comes with danger, and
soon Josh finds himself cut off from the world, with no one to turn to
for help. In this suspenseful young adult novel, The Gospel According
to Larry, Janet Tashjian has written a probing tour-de-force.
