Product Description

Having failed English, eighteen-year-old Steve York must generate a paper to get credit and chooses to think and write about his own sophomore and junior years of high school, during which he experienced his first love and struggled with family relationships.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #903565 in Books
• Published on: 1996-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 202 pages

Amazon.com Review
In order to pass English class and graduate, 18-year-old Steve York has to write a 100- page essay about his life. What sounds like a run-of-the-mill writing assignment, however, becomes an excuse for Steve to reflect on the last four years (from Texas freshman to California senior), and figure out where it all went wrong. Maybe it was when he discovered that he really couldn't relate to his father, the Famous Astronaut. Or it could be because his "heart had been run through frappé, puree, and liquefy on a love blender" by his ex-girlfriend, Wanda "Dub" Varner. No matter where the finger of blame ends up pointing, it's a wild ride of self-enlightenment as Steve discovers that not all relationships are permanent, and that some--like the one with his dad--can be mended with a little work. With Steve, author Rob Thomas has taken a teenage outsider and given him a funny, intelligent voice: "There are those males who merely fill ear holes with tiny studs hardly big enough to offend a Marine. Not me. Most days I wear big hoops. When I combine the look with a doo rag, I'm a regular pirate." As with his other novels--Doing Time and Slave Day--Thomas proves his thorough grasp of young adult issues and emotions. Teens will appreciate the author's empathy and humor, and teachers and parents will examine his work for clues to the mystery of adolescence. (Ages 13 and older) --Jennifer Hubert

From Publishers Weekly
In his first novel Thomas lays bare the pain, awkwardness and humor at the heart of one teenager's search for identity. Steve York has always lived in the long shadow cast by his too-perfect astronaut father. When his parents divorce just before he begins high school, Steve blames his father for the family's break-up, even though he doesn't know all the facts. Life with "the astronaut" (as Steve insists on calling him) is okay for a while as Steve juggles straight-As with a part-time job and hangs out with a wise-cracking crew of artsy, nonconformist cronies, one of whom, Dub, becomes his first love. But Dub's eventual betrayal causes Steve to flee his father's home and take a dive from scholar to stoner. His last chance for academic redemption lies in writing a 100-page paper for his new guidance counselor, a narrative that becomes the framework for this novel. Thomas, a former high school teacher, nails his setting with dead-on accuracy. The sharp descriptions of cliques, clubs and annoying authority figures will strike a familiar chord. The dialogue is fresh and Steve's intelligent banter and introspective musings never sound wiser than his years. Readers will likely enjoy the quick pace of Steve's journal-style flashbacks; on a deeper level, they will be moved by his emotional stumbles and impressed by his growing maturity. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up?"What happened in Texas?" asks Jeff DeMouy, the San Diego high school counselor trying to reach talented but stoned senior Steve York. The teen's 4.0 GPA has crashed so precipitously that he moves from Houston to live with his mother and her new husband. To fulfill a writing assignment that DeMouy requires for him to graduate, Steve begins to reflect on recent occurrences and his life in general. His first-person narrative flashes back to the years spent with his father, "the astronaut," who?the boy can't bring himself to recall?was either the third or fourth person to walk on the moon. Intelligent and mostly likable, Steve, along with his friends in the dadaist art study group at school, oozes a gently subversive strain of creativity. Through their club, he meets Dub (nee Wanda), with whom he journeys from first kiss to first sex to first betrayal, when Dub abandons him for their creative-writing teacher. The dead-on description of life as a bright underachiever makes the gradually converging stories, past and present, a delightful, challenging read. From the intriguing title to the final page, layers of cynical wit and careful character development accumulate achingly in this beautifully crafted, emotionally charged story. Steve's coming-of-age is not a smooth ballistic parabola, but more a series of explosive changes in relationships. These changes suggest to YA readers that, though complex and difficult, it is this weird willingness to establish interconnectedness that makes being human such a trip. This robust first novel is so hip and cool and strong it hurts.?Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Jr. High School, Iowa City, IA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Three years in the life
What has caused the descent of Steve York, verbally gifted high school student, once a straight A student, now an apathetic drug user?

A few months before graduation, Steve's guidance counselor intervenes, arranging for Steve to complete a failing English credit by composing a 100 page story.

Steve decides to write about his sophomore and junior year of high school, when he became involved with a group of non-conformists and formed the Grace Order of Dadaists (GOD) club. Also during that time, Steve met his first love and experienced the worst kind of heartbreak.

As Steve relates the sometimes wonderful, sometimes painful story of those years, he alternates with commentary on his senior year in San Diego: his academic recovery, fueled in part by a new love interest, and his reconciliation of long time tension with his father, a famous astronaut.

The novel's structure highlights the downward trajectory of Steve's Houston years, contrasted with the upward swing of his year in San Diego. Thomas tells Steve's story with a mix of clever humor, engrossing early-90s trivia, and non-sentimental, realistic teenage emotions. Highly recommended.

In search for meaning
I was assigned this novel for a master's class in teaching the adolescent learner. Thomas writes from the true perspective of a teenager in search of a meaning in his life when things seem hopeless and lost. Steve York displays all the characteristics of a high schooler looking for his identity. Although he protrays himself as a cynic and misfit, York represents all teenagers who simply seek acceptance and a place to fit in. York experiences the highs and lows, including his first love and the battle of appeasing a disappointed father.

Through writing, York finds that meaning and is able to mend fences and realize that only you can truly choose the right path for yourself. Steve eventually does that, makes up with his father and uses his intellect for construction and not destruction.

This is a solid YA novel that many teenagers should be able to associate with.

Review of Rats Saw God
The way that this book is written, you can't really say that you are going to stop "at the end of this chapter." There are no actual chapters. Taking place in two different years- one of which is the present time of the book, and one the essay that the main character is writing- it goes back and forth, sometimes with as little as two paragraphs in a section.
The book is mainly about Steve York, a San Diego senior in high school, who is failing, bummed out about life, and at the beginning he has a constant high. It goes back and forth between him in the present, and him as a sophomore student in Houston, Texas, who is popular at school, and is liked by everyone, who has a great girlfriend, and a lot of close friends- the only bad thing about his life, is that he lives with his father, Alan York, who is a world famous astronaut. Steve almost always calls his father "the astronaut".
A no-nonsense counselor, Mr. Demouy, tells him that if he writes a hundred page paper on the topic of his choice, that he can graduate from high school, and get his missing English credit. Through out the book, Demouy and Steve become close.
The book takes place in two different times and places, the late eighties, in Houston, Texas, and about nineteen ninety, in San Diego, California. In Texas, Steve lives in a suburb, in a large house, that has boxes that were never unpacked scattered through out it. And in San Diego, he lives with his mother- who is never home, for she travels with her husband (a pilot) almost all the time- and his sister, who turns out to be a major part of the story. Steve hates it at his dad's house, and doesn't care- mainly because he is (or was) high all the time- about where he lives in San Diego.
I loved this book, but it isn't for everyone. With the many sexual and drug innuendos, some people wouldn't be able to handle it. The book goes by quite fast, I read it in two days, and I'm not the best of readers. It is definitely written for teenagers in mind, although some adults may like it.
I learned many lessons from the book. One of which is that for two people to truly have a connection, words don't have to be a major thing in their relationship. As Steve finds out, a person who you might say a few words to on an occasional basis, and who your conversations never last more than a few sentences, may have one of the biggest connections to you out of any one in the world. Sometimes words aren't needed to have a connection.
The author developed the plot very well, although not in the most conventional of ways. The characters were also developed very well. I felt as though I truly knew Steve and his family. The situation is something that could definitely happen in the real world.
The book mixes humor, romance, life learned lessons, and serious subject matter all into one big web that somehow all fits together perfectly. I highly recommend every one to read it.