I am not exactly recommending this book:
(image from Amazon.com)
It is the kind of book where, after reading it, I went looking for other people who had read it—as opposed to looking for people who HADN’T read it, to tell them to do so. I wanted to TALK ABOUT IT. I am not at all sure I understand what happened, and I DO NOT LIKE uncertainty—but part of what I dislike about uncertainty is when I feel like the author doesn’t know what happened either and just waved a little “Woooooo, mysTERious/ARTsy!!!” hand over the plot to get the book finished so they could stop trying to figure it out; and in this case I feel like the author knows EXACTLY what happened, and it’s just the reader who might be too dim to put it together. (I would LOVE if the authors who do Clever Uncertainty would provide a merciful cheat-sheet for those of us in that Too Dim category.)
I would also have said I did not like gimmicks, and that I would not enjoy anything called “experimental fiction,” but I believe the evidence is beginning to pile up that I DO enjoy those things, at least in the hands of certain authors. In this case I felt a pleasantly blown-away by it.
But I found the first maybe half of the book pretty hard to get through, especially since it was about the sex/drug/emotional lives of high school theater kids, and one of my kids is a high school theater kid. I asked Henry, DO high school children typically have access to cocaine?? I never even saw POT in high school. “Nerd,” he remarked.
Henry! Not helpful.
I am pondering the question now. I would think, yes, yes they do. If their parents have access to cocaine. So, certain types of people and certain socio-economic groups absolutely have access to cocaine.
I also never even saw pot in high school. The first time I saw cocaine was with a bunch of lawyers when I was in my 20s (also the last time I saw coke, that I am aware of).
Anyway, Henry cracked me up.
Lol@ Henry. I also never saw drugs in high school but I seriously doubt anyone would have shared with me, I was a goody goody . They were immediately EVERYWHERE in college though and I was very excited to finally be included.
I haven’t read the book but I also have a comment about high school drugs. I didn’t see cocaine in high school but I did see pot, meth, LSD… I can’t think of anything else at the moment. My oldest (now 27) said the biggest drug in his high school was heroine and I did not expect that at all!
From my understanding, heroin (or the derivatives/offshoots) is EVERYWHERE. and then I think I need narcan and then I wish my town’s public health dept would just hold a thing and have it available already because I’m already DROWNING in the other 234349750232 things that I need to/should do that really, SHOULD NOT BE ON THE INDIVIDUAL’S SHOULDERS. Blargh. Can’t buy fentanyl test strips here, thought of as drug paraphernalia so that too. And then I fall into the abyss of the world being terrible and
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.
This is so crazy, I also literally just read this book and was dying to talk about it with someone. I actually think it was totally brilliant and disturbing and can’t stop thinking about it.
*SPOILER ALERT*
I read an interpretation online that the third part of the book was the only “real/objective” part, and that the characters of the British men and of Mr. Kingsley all represented different aspects of Mr. Lord (similar to how they discussed that Sarah splintered off Karen into several different characters in her book). The abuse was so traumatic that the girl(s) could only process it by coming at it sort of sideways. I also read that maybe Sarah/Karen are two aspects of the same character as well, or that Karen is the part of Sarah still stuck in the town and still mired in the abuse.
I haven’t read this but wanted to recommend Goodreads. If I finish a book and NEED to talk about it, reading all the reviews gives me feedback, other perspectives, and explanations. I can nod along, or totally disagree, but it provides a feeling of having discussed it with others.
Maggie2 – I immediately thought the same. When I finish a book that makes me continue thinking about it (good or bad) I *rush* to Goodreads to see what everyone else is saying!
As the mother of current high school theatre kid, I think I’ll save this book for later. And yeah, at my daughter’s High School students openly smoke weed while ON CAMPUS. We live in a state where pot is legal – but not for teens obviously!
Nerd!? Well he certainly pushed your button and I imagine had a great time doing it! Just exactly what you wanted to hear! His response made me laugh. Not that the subject of your question is laughable, but I know Henry’s such a swell kid.
I feel the EXACT SAME WAY about when the author doesn’t really know what happened – yeah, yeah, life is mysterious, there is no true closure, you sold the book, buddy, you damned well figure it out. I feel slightly less annoyed when I feel like they know and I don’t, or more annoyed with myself than the author. I think I took a run or two at this book and gave up, which is extremely rare for me and usually involves the ebook disappearing off my ipad and not being arsed to re-borrow it.
According to my kids there were drugs GALORE in high school, including cocaine. Hell if I know where they got it, other than the pot whose dealers had actual instagram pages. I have a naloxone kit but I haven’t been carrying it in my purse, which I guess I really should. Sigh.
I think this book is on my To Read list, but also as a mother to a Potentially Future Theatre Kid, maybe ignorance is bliss???
I have not read this book, so I am not the person you want to talk to about it, but I am reading another book (With Teeth) and I heard that there’s a twist at the end that changes how you see everything. I am a few chapters from the end and I am not sure whether knowing this ahead of time has enhanced my reading experience or made it worse.
I have not read this book but I think I am a couple of years older than you and definitely saw plenty of drugs in the theater-kid-adjacent crowd I was friends with in high school.
However, my 6th grader said recently that there are kids vaping in the bathroom at school and he’s smelled pot a couple of times. In middle school! That did surprise me.
And I am sometimes ok with ambiguous endings and sometimes not — it really does depend on how the author does it.
I just finished this book, and I had a similar reaction to it. It’s disturbing but interestingly done; the narrative techniques are pretty cool (the way the Karen character refers to herself in the third person, as if she’s a character? That really worked in a way I wouldn’t have expected.). None of the characters seem to be good, kind, or totally likeable, although I was rooting for the girls the whole time, of course. The men are all particularly hateful, pretty much each and every one of them awful in some way.
If I had to write a paper about it, it would be about the role of the car.