posted
I purchased a copy of Monster Rules by our very own mackillian. Which, if you buy the book, you'll find out is really by Jamie Taylor, whoever that is.
The book is not available through major booksellers, so it's sort of a limited edition except that I'm sure Jamie wouldn't mind selling millions of copies if people asked nicely. It's tough to say it has limited distribution since anyone on Earth could buy it via the internet. Let's just say it has limited exposure.
Which brings us to the cool fact that in buying the book, you also get two of Jamie's wonderful photos. One on the cover that shows the setting for some of the chapters in the book. The other on the inside back and shows a self-portrait of the artist as a young man. Just kidding -- James Joyce joke, couldn't resist. It shows Jamie in a shot that sort of reminds me of an M.C. Escher self-portrait actually. Very interesting shot.
Sheesh! Some people are so sensitive.
BEWARE ---- HERE THERE BE SPOILERS ------------DANGER WILL ROBINSON -----
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Anyway...that's sort of what this book is about. Sensitive and insensitive. That's not a spoiler, by the way. It's just my opinion.
Sensitive to the world around them, or not. Then hyper-sensitive to the world around them. Then, maybe so sensitive that they actually CAUSE bizarre phenomena to occur.
But this isn't Sci-Fi, or Horror. It's more in the genre of To Kill A Mockingbird than anything of speculative fiction.
It tells the story of a troubled boy with an abusive father. For all that, it has very little explicit violence. In fact, the violence is really just school yard bully stuff and sets a nice counterpoint to the eerie, other-worldly and infinitely more menacing type of violence coming at this kid from the adult world around him.
There's good and bad there.
It's a very truthful book.
And that's sad.
At first, I had some problems with the book. The kids didn't seem to act or think their ages. But as the book progressed, I realized that precocious intelligent kids could show wisdom beyond their years in some things and be incredibly juvenile in other things. And somehow Jamie has managed to capture that divided world on the cusp of, if not adulthood, the prequel to it. It's not a coming of age story in that respect. It's more of a "what I did on my summer vacation" story if you were a smart kid from a really messed up family being currently visited by a string of tragedies.
This is an uplifting book, eventually. You have to get through the bad stuff. You have to live it, unfortunately. And that's a plus. Jamie takes you inside. Maybe too far inside? The world this kid is living in. And you will cringe.
But you also find the strength to keep reading because the kid (Saul, by the way) has things that give him the strength to keep living it.
If you don't cry at the end, I'll be very surprised.
Honestly, this book is not for everyone. I, for example, like a lot more mental popcorn than this book offers. But it has truth and beauty and is worth a read even for fluff posters like me. You serious types would probably enjoy it right from the start. It took me about the first third before I was hooked. I kept dreading the awful things I just knew were going to happen to this kid. In a way, it was like waiting for a train wreck. But I was surprised at the truth of it and the power of it when the circumstances did finally unfold.
It is one of the few books that surprised me by what it DIDN'T do. Remarkable restraint was displayed. Truth won out.
And because Jamie knows whereof she speaks (she works with troubled kids...) the truth is there in gobs. And sobs. And happiness.
It's a good book.
In my rotation of book types, this will probably have pre-satisfied the urge for Dickens or maybe one of the American authors from the first half of the 1900's. It has a dark-ish feeling of a story about life in a timeless rural America. If it weren't for the presence of actual social services for children, you couldn't really tell this was a modern story at all.
But the social workers are definitely there. As heroes, and not quite heroes. Depending on whether you are in tune with Saul.
Lots of nice "grace points" in this book. That pun's for you, mack!
posted
I gonna both echo much of Bob's analysis (but not all, since of course I read it differently in many places), and express annoyance that he is able to write such a good critique and I ain't ;p
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
See, I got to read mack's book BEFORE it was a book.
(yes, I am special, oh so special)
She made me. She bugged me about it. And I didn't want to do it. I was afraid of the book.
I was right to be afraid.
It is very good, and very heartbreaking, but thank God (and jamie) it ended right.
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Still want a book of photographs, how's that coming, Jamie?
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The precociousness of the children bothered me at first, too, until I remembered something I had read the first week I joined Hatrack. There was a discussion about Ender's Game (imagine that!) and about the verbal/mental maturity of the children in the book. I don't remember quite how it was phrased, but one of the younger members (13 or so, was it JaneX? I don't remember) insisted that OSC got it Quite Right. So after I remembered that discussion, I put Saul's 'freakish smartitude' out of my mind. *************************
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