Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #661294 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 264 pages

Customer Reviews

Repetitious
While I enjoyed the story and the insight into the creative mind and process, I was thoroughly annoyed by the theme. Constantly repeated, over and over again. Simon says this, Simon says that. I got what the author was saying about conformity and being true to yourself, but I didn't need to be reminded every page. The repetition robbed the idea of its dramatic weight.

I did like the matter of fact depiction of gay characters. I'm heartened to see this becoming more common in YA literature.

Insight into the Outcast Adolescent Mind
Charles learned early on to hide his artwork. He is incredibly talented; his ability is far above anyone else he knows, but his art makes people uncomfortable. It makes them feel like they have something to live up to, and that feeling alienates them from Charles. So Charles keeps his artwork hidden. He tries to learn how to be normal, how to fit in with the crowd, how to play the games of Simon Says he seems to see going on all around him, where one person tells everyone else how to behave.

Then Charles reads a book, an exceptional book that seems to expose the games people play. This book shows him exactly what he has been thinking for so long, and he is shocked that someone would dare to share this piece of writing with the world. Even more shocking is that the person sharing the writing was an adolescent--a freshman at Whitman, a specialized boarding school for the arts. Charles needs to meet the author, Graeme Brandt, and find out from him the secret to taking something so personal and being able to share it with so many people without fear. Maybe Graeme will tell Charles the secret that will allow him to share his artwork with the world.

When Charles finally does meet Graeme, though, he is not the person Charles expected he would be. Could someone like Graeme really have written this book that changed Charles' whole life? Could he have written it without even realizing what he was doing?

The characters in this book were very vivid. I felt like I knew Charles and Adrian and Graeme, and I liked the relationships that formed among them. I also liked that homosexuality was a pretty big aspect of this book, but it wasn't treated like it was anything shocking; it was just accepted as no big deal.

I thought the teachers at this school were far too clueless to be believed, though. As guardians of high school students at a boarding school, they should have been much more aware than they were.

Excruciating, unrelenting angst
I was very excited when I bought this book. I love young adult literature and have always related to the themes of social alienation and conformity. But the unrelenting angst was just too much to bear. Through the whole novel the protagonist was nothing but "oh woe is me, no one will ever understand me, why do I even try." I understand feeling this way at times, especially in one's youth, but I kept waiting for him to learn something, toughen up a bit, SOMETHING. I kept reading because the introduction and foreshadowing piqued my interest and I wanted to see how it ended, but it was a nauseating read. The frequent italicized comments in the parantheses were unnecessary, and kept hindering my reading; I felt like the author was pounding me over the head with the extra meanings and deeper insights into the characters. I didn't even feel for any of these characters; in fact, as I read I thought, "Is THIS how I sounded in high school? No wonder so few people wanted to be around me!" I do give the book two stars instead of one, however, because of it's important reflections on conformity and doing what others expect of you. I think teens will be able to relate to that, and it's something that's true of a lot of adults, too. Overall, though, I thought the book laid on the angst way too thick.