“It’s hard to give a book like this a bad review because my feelings about the author and my personal feelings about this whole situation definitely come into play. It’s a hard thing. You might want to give a book a two-star rating, but somehow differentiate that from giving a person or his life a two-star rating. The guy clearly went through some very rough things, and I don’t want to armchair quarterback his life.
The book feels, to me, like it was written too soon. In the thick of the whole thing. I don’t even mean too soon chronologically, but too soon psychologically. That’s the blanket feeling I’m tucking this one in with.
I DID, however, want to talk about the back of this book, the expectations it set up, and how it kind of spoiled the book for me.
I would preface this review with “spoiler alert” except for the fact that the only spoiler in here is one that’s on the back of the book.
“The only thing that kept him from the brink: his friendship with a girl named Laura, a classmate-an enigmatic crush- who walked Eric back to “normal.” Then, in a tragic twist of fate, Laura became a ghost herself.”
This is a prime example of what I like to call the Iron Man Setup.
Most people have seen the movie Iron Man, so I’m not going to explain the whole thing, but as in most super hero movies we go through a painfully slow origin process. Check out most super hero movies. It takes around 45 minutes before the first shield is thrown, web is slung, and flame is on’ed.
In the preview for Iron Man you see Tony Stark emerge from a cave in a primitive version of the Iron Man suit, at which point he promptly starts blowing up terrorists. Rad.
In the movie, Tony Stark is captured and made to work on some weird missile or some bullshit, and the whole time you’re supposed to be wondering how he’s going to get out of this pickle. EXCEPT THAT YOU SAW IN THE FUCKING PREVIEW THAT HE BUILDS AN IRON MAN SUIT AND BLOWS EVERYONE UP. Not to mention that you are 100% aware that you’re seeing Iron Man. It came up in huge letters on the screen, it’s printed on your ticket, there is a sign above the theater you entered. We are very prepared to see an Iron Man.
So, if I hadn’t seen that preview, and furthermore if I didn’t already know that the movie I was watching was Iron Man, this double-cross while he was supposed to be constructing a missile would probably be an awesome reveal. It would be a Welcome to the Matrix moment of pure fanboy glee. But it’s not. We already have every expectation that it’s coming. In fact, we as the audience know more about it than everyone in the goddamn movie. And two minutes into wondering if he’s really making the missile thingy, I’m squirming in my seat and thinking, Jesus Christ, get in the damn Iron Man suit already.
Alright, so the back of this book tells us that this key person dies. So you expect, and and honestly I thought, the book would have a lot more to do with the aftermath of this death than the death itself. At what point does our hero learn about this death? Page 259 of 305. Almost 85% of the way into the book. Moreover, he learns about it in a strange, revelatory sort of way. If the narrator is experiencing this as a surprise, if shock and surprise is part of the emotional equation, I need to experience that shock and surprise on some level too, and that’s just not possible for me as I’ve already known for 259 pages that it’s coming.
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