Aftermaths

A switchblade. A baseball bat. A hammer. That’s the short list of implements Marcus imagines using to kill his dad in the debut young adult novel from poet David Hernandez.

Marcus, 17, is the elder of two Argentine-Peruvian American brothers -- the one not regularly beaten and kicked by his father. It isn’t revenge so much as regret that has spawned his murderous fantasies. He feels a form of survivor’s guilt about passively watching as 15-year-old Enrique endured repeated pummelings for such innocuous acts as running over a rock with a lawn mower.

Why was one son systematically beaten while the other was left untouched? And how does that affect the boys’ relationships with each other, their family and their friends? That’s the intriguing and powerful idea that forms the core of “Suckerpunch.” Unfortunately, the character who drives the action -- the father -- isn’t fully developed. The only explanation given for Enrique’s abuse is his physical resemblance to the father. Aside from brief flashbacks to specific incidents of abuse, we don’t see the boys interact with him. It’s almost as if Hernandez himself were scared of the father.

Granted, Dad is mostly absent. A year before the action begins, he left this note: “I’m leaving. Don’t look for me.” But Dad’s abusive history looms large, helping to shape both boys’ behavior.

Marcus is artistic, and insecure around the edges and shy around girls. Enrique is a good-looking, temperamental Lothario who unwittingly emulates his dad -- punching holes in the walls of his bedroom and menacing innocent strangers.

Hernandez, a Puerto Rican-born, Chicago-reared poet now living in Long Beach, succeeds in fleshing out the brothers’ night-and-day personalities and engaging them in believable interactions as they while away summer break the way unemployed teenage boys often do -- getting high and drunk, insulting one another and imagining sexual encounters with women they’ll never date. But when they find their father’s address and drive to his apartment, the boys confront a meek man.

Enrique recounts abuse after abuse, but the dad acts as if he’s taken a Valium. He merely agrees and apologizes, turning what should have been a climax into an unrealistic, emotionless letdown. For a scene in which a gun is waved, there is no emotional punch, especially when Dad “casually took the gun out of his hand as if Enrique were passing him a television remote.”

The last two chapters attempt to explain what happened, but only symbolically, with a pair of wounded animal metaphors that don’t really tell us anything. In the end, “Suckerpunch” fails to live up to its name. Hernandez took a powerful concept, but instead of dealing the blow, he ducked.

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susan.carpenter@latimes.com