Language of Love

Jennifer Ziegler’s “Worser” centers a socially awkward,  12-year-old, word-loving boy William Orser, whose life is upended by his single mother’s recent stroke, but finds glimmers of hope when it turns out there are friends to be found who also share his love of wordplay.  Worser explores both the beauty and power of words and how they can still feel completely inadequate and teaches us that spaces between words are as important as the words.  Orser’s father passed away when he was very young nicknamed Worser on the first day of second grade, and bullied by the other kids. His Aunt Iris who is taking care of them, ironically Worser’s mother was a professor of rhetoric who can longer speak, but who had imparted a love of words in her son when he was a child, a love that has continued. Worser has been working on a project he calls his Masterwork, a loose-leaf binder filled with lists of important observations about words, a project that enables him to work in the library at the end of the school day to avoid going home and dealing with his mother and aunt. But now, because of budget cuts, Worser finds that the library is closed after school, but not before he meets a Turk, who has his own unique twist on words. No library forces Worser to find another place to work on his Masterwork and eventually he finds and strikes a deal with Mr. Murray, the owner of a second-hand bookstore called Re-Visions. When Worser finds out that his crush, Donya Khoury, has lost the school sponsor for her Library Clun and can no longer meet in school, Worser comes up with a plan to help her out using his space at the bookstore and ultimately becoming a member of the club. But when Mr. Murray’s rent is increased, it looks like he will have to close Re-Visions.

As Worser’s coming-of-age story is developed, he began to grow on you and realise how traumatized he was by the things that have happened to him over time and his attempts to avoid facing the truths about his feelings. Converting his emotions into words is exactly how he lost his ability to communicate with the world and it would take a catastrophic event for him to find his way back. Worser is filled with amazing words and turns of phrase and an incredible main character. Worser is frustrated when he hears words used incorrectly. He makes his frustration known by constantly correcting those around him, and that has not earned him any friends. Since the propensity for correcting folks isn’t limited to just his classmates, he has recently found himself in the principal’s office for correcting his teachers.