Product Description

After her best friend, Max, drowns, Charlie Fletcher is overwhelmed with shock and grief. When she attempts to explain what happened that day at the Mill Pond, no one believes her. The doctors and her mother think she may be hallucinating, or worse-crazy. Even her sympathetic brother can't understand what is happening to her. Charlie nearly died trying to save Max and as an aftermath to this terrifying experience, Charlie begins to have incredibly vivid dreams, where she sees Max walking far in the distance in a strange land. She tries to catch up, but she can never reach him. Sleep soon becomes her only passion. But one night, after waking up from a dream with cuts and bruises, she realizes that her nighttime excursions are real. She alone has the power to hunt for Max. And she knows he's out there somewhere. To save him, she'll follow his trail wherever it goes-even beyond the limits of this world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #728615 in Books
• Published on: 2004-10-01
• Released on: 2004-09-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

Customer Reviews

A Deliciously Eerie, Mysterious Novel from Jonathan Stroud
This is the second novel written by Jonathan Stroud, the author of the Bartimaeus trilogy (The Amulet of Samarkand, The Golem's Eye, and Ptolemy's Gate). As with Stroud's other books, this book contains some sophisticated themes.

The novel tells the story of a young girl, Charlie (short for Charlotte), who witnesses the drowning death of her best friend, Max. She tries to save him, but is stopped in her rescue attempt by other-worldly forces. When Charlie tells her story, nobody believes her but think she is suffering delusions due to her recent trauma.

In the meantime, Charlie dreams of Max and is convinced that he is still alive. She vows to find him in her dreams and rescue him.

This book contains a similar narrative device to the one Stroud uses in "Amulet". The first-person narrative point-of-view switches between Charlie and her older brother James. It was confusing at first, because unlike "Amulet" there are no chapter titles telling you who's currently telling the story. However, once you figure out what's going on, it's an effective method of telling what's going on inside Charlie and James' heads.

The story is a supernatural one where Charlie travels in an alternate world in her dreams. Stroud is adept at creating suspense and immersing you in exciting action scenes when you can't take the suspense any more.

Like "Buried Fire", the ending seems a little abrupt, but it is satisfying. Maybe I just thought it was abrupt because I didn't want the story to end! What other measure of good writing can there be when the story ends and leaves you wanting more? Highly recommended.

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"Leap" in headlong
Losing a friend is one of the greatest traumas a person can have, especially if they somehow feel responsible for the death. Fantasy writer Jonathan Stroud tackled that sensitive topic in "The Leap," an early novel that straddled the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

Charlie nearly died trying to rescue her drowning pal Max, and now she's suffering from her grief and shock. She remembers strange green women dragging him down, yet no one believes her. But things change suddenly when she begins to have strange dreams, of a surreal land where Max is walking in the distance.

In her dreams, Charlie encounters a strange man who tells her that Max is heading toward the Great Fair -- if he joins an alluring magic dance there, he will be lost forever. But the dreams are having a lasting effect on Charlie -- she's waking up with scratches, and thinks she sees wolves from her dream outside her house. Can she save Max, or will she herself be lost in the world of the dead?

It's a credit to Stroud that while including elements of fantasy, he's able to portray grief and guilt so expertly. In fact, as good as the dream sequences are, the detached, erratic behavior that Charlie has in the real world is much, much more compelling.

Stroud alternates between lush, descriptive writing in the dream realm, and more down-to-earth styles when Charlie is awake. And it's deeply affecting when he describes how the loss of Max has hit Charlie, her family, and his grieving parents. The only flaw is that we only get brief glimpses of Max; we never really get to know him.

But Stroud hits the bulls-eye with Charlie and her family -- she's determined to save Max, and not willing to believe that he's gone. And her family is afraid that she's going insane. To keep things grounded, her brother James narrates some chapters, giving an idea of what her family thinks of her strange behavior. James thoughts are as powerful as Charlie's, out of fear that his sister is going bonkers.

Stroud never quite explains whether the "dream world" events are real, but perhaps it's better that he left it that way. In the end, "The Leap" is a powerful tale about grief and love.

That's It?
I had read some of the other books by this author, such as The Bartimaeus Trilogy books and Buried Fire. So I thought to myself, well, I loved the Bartimaeus Trilogy Books, and Buried Fire was okay, so how bad could it be?

The answer... Really Bad

If you have read the Giver, by Lois Lowry, and really liked the way it ended, you might just have a chance at enjoying this book. Unfortunately, I did not. The Leap starts out as an interesting enough story. I really got into it and couldn't put it down. You are led to believe that everything Charlie is dreaming is real, plausable. She seems sane enough, right? So you get wrapped up in her mission, really believing that she just might pull it off. You just want to believe that Max can come back, or that at least Charlie can become part of this other world.

Smack! Wrong again!

Sudenly, it appears that Charlie is just insane, as you see it from her brothers point of view and hers at the same time.
From her point of view, it appears that she screws the whole thing up, and then tries to fix it.
From her brothers, she appears to be getting ready to jump into a pit and kill herself, so he saves her.

Then it ends.

You are left thinking, "Um, sorry if this makes me sound stupid, but I don't get it. Did I miss something?"
There is no explanation, no clue as to what was really going on. It is just, over. Done. Finished.
Did her brother stop her from killing herself, or becoming part of this other world, or both?
Is Charlie insane? Is this all just a figment of her imagination?

The only reason I would ever recomend this book is if someone intended to read it and rewrite the ending just for writing practice, or as example of how NOT to end a book.

Fortunately, I have not lost faith in this writer, because I have read some of his later works and really enjoyed them. I hope you follow in my example and do not judge Jonathan Stroud souly upon this one book.

Okay, Rambling done.