Poet and short story writer Richard Scarsbrook has parlayed a 1999 short story into a first novel with mixed results. We follow the adventures of Dak Sifter in discrete vignettes, from Grade 7 to first year university, each linked via a series of “firsts” on his road to manhood.

Our appealing protagonist hits an immediate U-turn, destroying a lawn tractor and his lawn, in his first encounter with a “manly” machine. Dak fares little better with other machines through the years. There are delicious scenes of Dak’s less-than-stellar prowess with his first dirt bike, first car, first assembly line, and a dilapidated truck. His father is always trying to up Dak’s manliness quotient, even supplying him with a large dog named Smiley, but it doesn’t work. Dak – an intellectually gifted, earnest, polite kid – admits that if they issued report cards for dogs, Smiley’s would be just like his.

Despite those gentle traits, Dak never meets a thug he can’t obliterate. In that Petri dish of social terror – the school bus – he annihilates a bully. He also humiliates the baddest of the high school bad boys, forces the retirement of a maniacal factory foreman, and topples an entire evil evangelical cult. Though his longtime pursuit of his love Zoe has the rings of realism and the material and strong language place the story squarely in the YA category, Dak’s Walter Mitty-like ability to vanquish opponents makes the story feel like an early reader. Cheeseburger Subversive brims with well-realized and poignant scenes, keenly observed details, and light-handed humour, but there’s no rising tension to these linked episodes. And, as engaging as Dak is at 13, he’s much the same at 18, making this a coming-of-age story that doesn’t quite grow up.