Pan

The word panic comes from the Greek god Pan, lord of the forests and flocks, capable of sowing sudden terror among people and animals. Nicholas, the protagonist of this novel, is the son of divorced parents and, at fifteen, has a constant feeling of being out of place. He lives with his father in the suburbs of Chicago and, one day in class, he forgets how to breathe. At the hospital, they teach him to use a paper bag to calm himself. But what begins as a diagnosis of anxiety becomes, for him, something more: perhaps the god Pan dwells within his body. In search of answers, he takes refuge in Wilde, Baudelaire, Camus, and the music of Bach. Through Sarah, a girl from his school, he comes into contact with a group of teenagers who meet in a secluded barn, and who accept him because he is not like the others. Under Ian's charismatic leadership, they practice strange rituals with drugs, sex, and pagan symbols: they believe Nicholas has something special, and perhaps the only thing that can save him is writing as a form of healing.