The Body of Christopher Creed has a great hook -- there's the Title of Death and then Torey's Mysterious New Start at a new school where people don't stare at him. My mind jumped to all sorts of conclusions in that first chapter and was screaming with questions. Did Torey find the body? Was he responsible for the death? What really happened? Is Torey a reliable narrator? Etc. etc. It is an intriguing story -- even if Torey is a dumb nickname for a male high school jock.
I liked it, generally, though it's flawed; it reads like the first novel it is. Most of my frustration came from the writing style, with forced-seeming slang and oh-so-awkward dialogue. Plum-Ucci can claim some excuse for this, because, dude, Torey wrote the book; blame the amateur style on him. (As an English teacher, I'd mark Torey down for using "weird" and "weirdness" far too often.) That's not a valid excuse for me. If I'm cringing about the overuse of "DUDE" by page 23, that's probably overkill. Plum-Ucci was just trying too hard to be one of the cool kids. "Turbo-slut" was new to me, though the Urban Dictionary has three definitions; I thought she made it up.
Question: Is a high school student likely to remember a random (albeit dorky) kid using the word "winsome" way back in second grade? I'm not surprised that Chris Creed knew and used that word as a wee, nerdy second grader. What is out of character is self-professed dumb-guy Alex recalling that useage yonks later when he doesn't seem like the kind of person who even know what "winsome" means as a high schooler, much less a seven-year-old. There were multiple times when the personality of a character didn't match up with their actions or words.
I obviously have many bones to pick with Plum-Ucci's style issues. Moving on to structure, (oh boy!) the letters at the end were convenient devices. The last one successfully left me with a feel-good finish, but I don't think they were necessary. Hard to say now if I prefer the story without, but I don't know. Other opinions on Torey's replies?
The American Indian ghost stuff was...weird. No idea where that came from. I was very disappointed that immaculate decomposition is pretend. Or it is as far as I can tell; there are no references online.
I have many critiques about the book, but I did enjoy it. It's a thriller with a not-too-heavyhanded message.
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11 comments:
Urgh, I'm sorry, I thought the book was pretty awful. I don't have anything interesting to say about it yet but I promise to come back later with some responses to your thoughts.
I think I agree more with Sarah on this one. I didn't think the book was awful -- far from it, really, as I found myself getting more and more engaged as the book went on.
I definitely agree that Plum-Ucci was trying too hard. A lot of her dialogue, slang, style, imagery, etc., seemed very cliched. I guess it seemed obvious to me that a teenage male didn't write it.
I had to do a lot of suspension of disbelief in this one, and I'm guessing all the unbelievable elements about the book are why Meera found it awful (yes?). But I did care enough to suspend my disbelief, which I don't often do. So I viewed that as a plus. Maybe it was just the hook that got me -- I wanted the mystery to get solved, so I wanted to keep reading. Maybe that's all it was, since I had problems with the author's styling and the narration and the impossibility of some of it. But regardless, I wanted to keep reading. That has to say something.
S, did you end up with a feel-good finish because you think the last letter was really written by Creed or just because it provides satisfying guess-explanations of where he could be? I don't really think it's Creed, as it appears to be written by an adult and it's too coincidental that Creed took Torey's exact name when Torey is the one who is so invested in the story. But maybe that's another thing that needs to be suspended -- maybe I can believe it's him if I really want to. By the way, I agree that teenagers wouldn't remember the exact wordings of a second-grader, but Alex is a "brainiac" (p. 24) as well as a class clown, so maybe he remembers stuff like that.
I just tried to Google "immaculate decomposition," and Hedgehog comes up as the first hit! Heh. That's pretty disappointing if it's fake, though. And I agree that all that Indian ghost stuff was kind of weird. I didn't get into that.
Anyway, I wouldn't call this book a wash. I wouldn't rush to recommend it to anyone (except maybe my teenage cousins, who would probably like the blood-and-guts-mystery of it all), but I wouldn't tell anyone to stay away at all costs.
No, I didn't dislike it because it was unbelievable. I disliked it because all the characters seemed stereotyped and I couldn't stand the narrator, who struck me as almost Neanderthal in his density. He kept on having these "insights" into life, the universe, and everything that seemed to amount to little more than "woah, other people are human!" I disliked it because I thought all of the conclusions it came to were shallow and obvious.
But I'm glad you guys enjoyed it. This isn't one of those cases where I end up feeling like there's only one way to respond to a book (which I admit does sometimes happen ;-))
Eunice, the last letter struck me as device-y, but because it could be interpreted as being Creed or a just a regular nice person who wanted to write back for some odd reason (you say adult, but Creed is supposed to be a smarty, so I think that's up for grabs), I did finish on a positive note...despite that fact that I could not understand why Torey thought that Creed might be living under an assumed combined name of people Creed admired; that seemed unlikely and stupid to me. Very random.
I think what this all boils down to is reading style. I really try to flow with the story -- it's easy for me to suspend disbelief. The only things that stop me are poor writing (and this book had its share) or characters I don't care about. Beyond that (and I think this has something to do with me being a people-pleaser) I like to give the author a chance to tell a story and I believe what they want me to. I guess I'm a pushover reader?
Meera, I get what you wrote about stereotyped characters, and yes, this book is full of oversimplified versions of teenagers, but I think that speaks clearly to a lot of YA readers because it's familiar -- the cliques at school, etc. When I looked up info about this book (futile searching for references to immaculate decomposition), many YA readers said the book made them think about the weird kids at their school and how to treat them. It's an afterschool special!
Furthermore, conclusions that seem shallow and obvious to us now have to have been novel at some point; perhaps Torey is just a tad slow? In that way, this book reminded me a little of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, where everything was SO IMMEDIATE!!! AND DEEP!!!
Eunice, I'm sorry, but no way in hell will *any* seven-year-old remember the use of "winsome" by anyone, even a teacher who tries to cram some sense of vocabulary down a student's mouth. I don't care how smart he is.
Maybe I'm being overcritical on this point because it came across as a forced line to show how weird Creed was. Instead, it places Alex on a level of intelligence near Creed. ...but Alex isn't a reject, so it illustrates a social point? Nah --
Anyway. I liked it alright, though I'm not prompted to read any other of Plum-Ucci's books.
I guess my response to your justification, Sarah, is that I think even though kids might be inexperienced readers or livers of life (hee -- I said livers.), they deserve better writing than this. After-school specials have a place in the world, I suppose, but I'm not going to say I like them just because they send a positive message. It's not just kids -- I think adults deserve better too. I loathed the movie "Crash" precisely because I thought it was an after-school special dressed up as a serious film. To me sending a "message" is NEVER more important than good writing, well-developed ideas, strong voices, and engaging characters. I personally just don't think this book had any of that.
Wow, you really disliked this book!
I meant afterschool special in a candid way, sorry. I hate Books With Messages as much as you do.
I know, it does sound like I hated it, doesn't it? In fact I simply didn't like anything about it.
:-)
Oh, I love discussions like this, even though they make me squirm a bit. And the more I think about it, the more I realize the book really was poorly done. But there was something about it that made me keep reading, so I stand by that. Whatever it might be.
M, our differences really do crack me up. I really liked Crash and thought it deserved the Oscar. But I really, really disliked Brick, which we saw way back when. We now have Hedwig in our Blockbuster queue, so I'm hoping we can meet on middle ground for that one! : )
Maybe we can just call it a car wreck book...
You liked Crash and hated Brick??? If you don't enjoy Hedwig I might cry.
I think I might move it down in our queue a bit -- I'm not sure if I'm ready to admit that we really do have opposite tastes in the arts... : )
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