Jumper (1992)

Author: Steven Gould | Page Count: 344

"Then his arm jerked forward and the belt sung through the air and my body betrayed me, squirming away from the impact and...
There was no sign of Dad, but this didn't surprise me. I was in the fiction section of the Stanville Public Library and, while I knew it as well as my own room, I didn't think my father had ever been inside the building.
That was the first time."

Davy is the son of an abusive, alcoholic father and a mother who fled the marriage years before. He soothes his anguish with books and then by becoming a runaway. This is made possible by his ability to teleport anywhere that he has been and has a clear memory of. The ability manifested itself as a way to avoid his father's rage and took him to his sanctuary of books at the local library. Having learned to use the ability to his advantage, Davy relocates to New York and begins living on his own.

Teleportation is an essential of sci-fi that gets a nice domestic spin here which is cool, but is secondary to the main theme of Davy coming to grips with his abuse at the hands his father and others. His struggles bring out his own rage and reveals his greatest fear of becoming an abuser himself. The later chapters focus a bit more on the consequences of his teleporting and push the character growth into the background, but it is still entertaining. An underpinning of science fiction to tell a very human story is a classic literary structure and is put to good use.

4 I liked the movie anyway, Lye out of 5