Book 2 takes Carl through another eleven chapters. Carl is now at Towson High.
Quite a few people wrote about how Carl should be able to use his great wisdom and understanding to make his relationships with his family, specifically his brother and mother, better. That’s an interesting idea, but maybe not so realistic. A lot of Chapter 13 is about those relationships, and how they continue to deteriorate.
Not all problems can be fixed. We see that all the time, both in small personal problems and big national and international problems. What makes anybody think they can fix a family that is broken? Some things in life are simply fucked up, and all the psychobabble in the world won’t change them.