Apparently we are on a pretty hard Stephen King binge here at Whiskey Before Breakfast. It's summer after all and although I wouldn't put King's novels in the "Beach Book" category, he's nonetheless a Big Mac and fries kind of author (he said it himself, look here). Somehow McDonald's and summertime reading are related. Aside from that, both Spence and I share a slightly disturbing love for this man's work and of the macabre he chooses to write on. So, without further ado, I give you Stephen King's newest novel, Joyland.
If you were to climb back into the depths of our blog you would probably uncover a couple more Stephen King reviews lurking behind a pile of cat skulls or eating the remains of that black ooze leaking from the post above it. Yet, with all the hotel hauntings and broken ankles that King has forever burned into our mortal memories, this time around he's decided to pursue the longtime niche genre of Hard Case Crime, a brand of novels that were huge when King was younger. Joyland is part mystery, part Hardy Boys, part coming of age and small part ghost story (just to reminded the reader that it's Stephen King writing after all).
It's a novel that centers around the twenty-one year old college student, Devin Jones, who takes up a summer job at the carnival/amusement park Joyland in the summer of 1973. The story takes place in Heaven's Bay, North Carolina, which, to any die-hard King fan, knows this is surprisingly outside the normal setting the author usually deals with. Don't worry though, Devin is from Maine so it's not completely without ties to the homeland. When the novel opens, Devin has just taken up residence at a local beach-side accommodation where he learns of the legendary murder of Linda Gray, a girl who was visiting Joyland four years before with her secret lover, only to have been murdered in the classic carny attraction, Horror House. This is where you would think the novel would barrel headfirst into a Mystery Gang search for the killer and put whatever is haunting the Horror House to rest, but much of this is shoved to the side as the story of Devin takes over.
This work is very much the story of a young man confronting heartbreak and the effects that follow along with the ebbs and flows of hardship that every life seems to bring. A central theme would be "coming-of-age" much similar to that of King's short story "The Body", except with a slightly older crowd. The reader learns the carny lingo, otherwise known as the Talk, as well as what "wearing the fur" means (which, to be honest, didn't turn out as horrific as I had imagined). Devin grows up and changes as the novel progresses and the reader does right along side him. But, because this is a King novel, much of the book is spent on developing character and character relationships. I would say this was the one downfall of the work because not much happens until the last twenty pages or so. This isn't to say that the novel is a bust or not worth your while, but it was somewhat jarring when I hit page 250 and was suddenly thrown back into Hardy Boy mode. All in all though, the ending is a solid one and will pull at those heart-guts and leave every reader satisfied.
I'm usually not one for mystery novels (in fact, I hate them), but because my boy Stephen King is such a great writer I am throwing this one up on the Summer Reading List for you guys. But, in light of it not being a true "horror novel", some of you may actually brave a King novel for the first time, and to that I say, "about time!" So, don your detective caps and break out those family photos from the 70s (you know, the ones that Nickleback likes to sing about) and settle in for a good summer read.
-- Zach
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
Monday, July 1, 2013
Fair Extension
Beautiful people,
Here at Whiskey Before Breakfast, we understand the importance of balancing work and leisure. Even though Zach and I have retreated to the coast for a brief sabbatical, we still intend to make your visit to our blog worthwhile. So while you recline at your desk and casually entertain yourself with this short missive, please remember that we risked sunburn, rip currents, and sharks to bring this to you.
While on the road, Zach and I selected a book on CD from the wide array of entertainment options available to travelers these days. After extensive deliberation, we opted for Full Dark, No Stars, one of our favorite Stephen King short story selections. In particular, we listened to "Fair Extension," the shortest of these short stories.
"Fair Extension" begins with Dave Streeter, a man dying of lung cancer. While driving home, he stops to talk to a salesman named George Elvid, who claims to sell "extensions." If you want more money, beauty, happiness, power, etc., you can obtain an extension from Mr. Elvid. However, there is a catch: to gain more of something, you have to take it from someone you know. After some consideration, Streeter makes a deal with Elvid: he gets a life extension of fifteen prosperous, happy years, if he gives Elvid 15% of his salary and transfers all of his unhappiness and misfortune onto his childhood friend, Tom Goodhugh, who married Streeter's high school girlfriend and has experienced good luck all his life (often at Streeter's expense).
The rest of the story reads fairly quickly, almost like a grocery list. Streeter's cancer disappears, and his life begins accelerating in a positive direction. His marriage improves, he gets promoted, and his children become wealthy and successful. Conversely, Tom Goodhugh's life takes a drastic turn for the worse. His wife dies of cancer, his children endure seemingly random tragedies, his health deteriorates, and his money drains away. At the end of the story, Streeter and his wife are stargazing and contemplating their good fortune. The planet Venus appears in the night sky, and Streeter asks his wife to make a wish. She admits that she can't think of anything, because they have everything that they've ever wanted or needed. Streeter then makes a silent wish--for more.
"Fair Extension" begins like a typical morality tale. Someone makes a deal with the devil (Elvid = Devil--we see you, Steve) and goes on to experience the consequences. "Fair Extension" deviates from this structure, in that Streeter's deal with the devil doesn't backfire in a contrapasso kind of way. As Elvid says, "I'm just a businessman." Streeter makes a casual business exchange, and then watches his own life improve while his friend's life falls apart. Unlike traditional morality plays, "Fair Extension" isn't warning people about the dangers of "making a deal with the devil." Instead, Stephen King is showing that the worst sins don't come from the devil, they come from within ourselves. It's disturbingly easy to trade another person's suffering for your own personal gain, if granted that power.
I also had the vague notion that King was satirizing American religion in this story. If you shake hands with God and give Him enough money, you'll be loaded with blessings, and you're not obligated to really care about your fellow man, because his life is "between him and God," and doesn't concern you. Or something like that.
Once again, Stephen King opens the lid on human nature and shows us who we really are. This story is pretty short (~30 pages) and is definitely worth your time. For those of you who are taking a road trip or going on vacation, Full Dark, No Stars is a great choice for an entertaining, interesting read.
~Spence
Here at Whiskey Before Breakfast, we understand the importance of balancing work and leisure. Even though Zach and I have retreated to the coast for a brief sabbatical, we still intend to make your visit to our blog worthwhile. So while you recline at your desk and casually entertain yourself with this short missive, please remember that we risked sunburn, rip currents, and sharks to bring this to you.
While on the road, Zach and I selected a book on CD from the wide array of entertainment options available to travelers these days. After extensive deliberation, we opted for Full Dark, No Stars, one of our favorite Stephen King short story selections. In particular, we listened to "Fair Extension," the shortest of these short stories.
"Fair Extension" begins with Dave Streeter, a man dying of lung cancer. While driving home, he stops to talk to a salesman named George Elvid, who claims to sell "extensions." If you want more money, beauty, happiness, power, etc., you can obtain an extension from Mr. Elvid. However, there is a catch: to gain more of something, you have to take it from someone you know. After some consideration, Streeter makes a deal with Elvid: he gets a life extension of fifteen prosperous, happy years, if he gives Elvid 15% of his salary and transfers all of his unhappiness and misfortune onto his childhood friend, Tom Goodhugh, who married Streeter's high school girlfriend and has experienced good luck all his life (often at Streeter's expense).
The rest of the story reads fairly quickly, almost like a grocery list. Streeter's cancer disappears, and his life begins accelerating in a positive direction. His marriage improves, he gets promoted, and his children become wealthy and successful. Conversely, Tom Goodhugh's life takes a drastic turn for the worse. His wife dies of cancer, his children endure seemingly random tragedies, his health deteriorates, and his money drains away. At the end of the story, Streeter and his wife are stargazing and contemplating their good fortune. The planet Venus appears in the night sky, and Streeter asks his wife to make a wish. She admits that she can't think of anything, because they have everything that they've ever wanted or needed. Streeter then makes a silent wish--for more.
"Fair Extension" begins like a typical morality tale. Someone makes a deal with the devil (Elvid = Devil--we see you, Steve) and goes on to experience the consequences. "Fair Extension" deviates from this structure, in that Streeter's deal with the devil doesn't backfire in a contrapasso kind of way. As Elvid says, "I'm just a businessman." Streeter makes a casual business exchange, and then watches his own life improve while his friend's life falls apart. Unlike traditional morality plays, "Fair Extension" isn't warning people about the dangers of "making a deal with the devil." Instead, Stephen King is showing that the worst sins don't come from the devil, they come from within ourselves. It's disturbingly easy to trade another person's suffering for your own personal gain, if granted that power.
I also had the vague notion that King was satirizing American religion in this story. If you shake hands with God and give Him enough money, you'll be loaded with blessings, and you're not obligated to really care about your fellow man, because his life is "between him and God," and doesn't concern you. Or something like that.
Once again, Stephen King opens the lid on human nature and shows us who we really are. This story is pretty short (~30 pages) and is definitely worth your time. For those of you who are taking a road trip or going on vacation, Full Dark, No Stars is a great choice for an entertaining, interesting read.
~Spence
Monday, June 24, 2013
I Go Among Trees
Faithful readers,
In the spirit of New Content Monday (although I'm sure for some of our readers with a keenly developed sense of danger, it's always New Content Monday), I have decided to share a favorite poem of mine: I Go Among Trees by Wendell Berry.
I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirring becomes quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear in it leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it. As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.
I won't bore you with a long explication, but I've always loved this particular poem. The wilderness has always been a source of renewal and vitality, and I don't think anyone understands this quite as well as Wendell Berry (the agrarian of agrarians--look him up!). Only after listening to the song of the wilderness is the speaker able to understand and know himself.
Zach's and my college fraternity brothers often adventure into the great outdoors, and this poem strikes a sentimental chord for me. Being connected to nature is extraordinarily important, for reasons I don't even completely understand yet. So... after signing up for Whiskey Before Breakfast email updates... get out there!
"One impulse from a vernal wood/ Can teach you more of man,/ of moral evil and of good,/ Then all the sages can."
~Spence
New Content Mondays
Well folks, here it is! The day and content you've all been waiting for. I've entitled this post 'New Content Mondays' for a couple reasons. The first is I feel like Monday gets a bad rap compared to all the other days of the week. Friday, the King of Days, is usually at the forefront of the average work-a-day citizen and is viewed as something close to a godsend. It was as if the Romans (or whoever made our calendar. Don't look at us, we just follow the structure not the history) decided that Friday would always be seen as the Michael Jordan of days, while Monday would sit wallowing in hate-filled pity as people loathed and dreaded its very existence. Heck, there's even a disease out there that employees fall back on when they are lacking in productivity (ever hear of "a case of the Mondays"?). That's not fair Monday and we know that. We like you and appreciate the time and effort you put in every week on the calendar.
The second reason was that I simply decided to upload the new content today. We still like Monday, but come on, Friday is clearly a better day (don't tell Monday we said that). So, as promised, here is your new content. I'll give a brief description and then let you take care of the rest.
This video was shown to me by a friend not too long ago and made me laugh enough that I decided to watch it during my free time. I'm not a huge YouTuber, but this stuff really cracks me up and if you appreciate literature or writing or words, then you should enjoy this as well. It's called "Your Grammar Sucks" and is a video series on all the horrendously awful YouTube comments posted by people who either haven't cracked open a book or spoken normal English in a while. We may not have the most consistent grammar here at Whiskey Before Breakfast, but we still don't suck this bad (at least, that's what we tell ourselves). Basically, if you don't do this in your writing I guarantee you will see an improvement in both your writing quality and social stigma. Hope ya'll enjoy!
The second reason was that I simply decided to upload the new content today. We still like Monday, but come on, Friday is clearly a better day (don't tell Monday we said that). So, as promised, here is your new content. I'll give a brief description and then let you take care of the rest.
This video was shown to me by a friend not too long ago and made me laugh enough that I decided to watch it during my free time. I'm not a huge YouTuber, but this stuff really cracks me up and if you appreciate literature or writing or words, then you should enjoy this as well. It's called "Your Grammar Sucks" and is a video series on all the horrendously awful YouTube comments posted by people who either haven't cracked open a book or spoken normal English in a while. We may not have the most consistent grammar here at Whiskey Before Breakfast, but we still don't suck this bad (at least, that's what we tell ourselves). Basically, if you don't do this in your writing I guarantee you will see an improvement in both your writing quality and social stigma. Hope ya'll enjoy!
-- Zach
Thursday, June 20, 2013
Scar Tissue
Drugs. What comes to mind when you read or hear the word "drugs"? Some of you may think of the slightly megalomaniacal med-student with the lazy eye that sits behind that big counter at your local Rite Aid. He fills your prescriptions and gives you the goods, but what is he really doing back there behind all those shelves and boxes (and what's in those boxes, asks Brad Pitt)? Or, some of you may think of what I'm actually referring to and that's illegal substances (unless you live in Colorado or Washington, I guess). These are the ones that are all hopped up on dopamine and serotonin in order to give you all those good feels and that depressing and abysmal crash later. This, and a little bit of the making of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, is what Scar Tissue is all about.
I'll be upfront and honest with you, I picked up Scar Tissue because I wanted to know how messed up Anthony Kiedis', the lead singer for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, life was. And boy was it incredible! We here at Whiskey Before Breakfast often talk about the mountaintops we've reached with the various virtues and vices that we've attempted. These are mostly metaphorical and we try to use some discrepancy when considering which one to conquer next. Kiedis, on the other hand, literally has made it to these mountaintops, saw that he wasn't quite high enough (pun intended) and then proceeded to construct a psychedelic stairway to Pluto, just to ask it how it feels about not being a planet anymore. Oh, and this stairway was made out of drugs. And sex.
I've read reviews on how this book describes the darker side of rock and roll and how rock and roll really does destroy a musician's moral spirit if they are not careful. To that I say: bull crap! Kiedis wasn't duped or swindled by a "bad side" of rock and roll, he was completely consumed by drugs and having a good time. The book is a really great read and takes you through the life of the RHCP's lead singer and how he formed friendships and bonds along the way.Obviously, it's a biography, but in the same way, it's much more than that. It's a story of a man who recognizes his own destructive ways, but is having too good of a time to stop until it's too late.
Never have I been one to really love the Red Hot Chili Peppers, but I can honestly say that this book has helped me appreciate their music more. Kiedis reveals the stories and thought processes behind the writing of their songs as well as the struggles that the band faced throughout their existence. For the music lovers out there, you should pick this up just to see if any of your band members might be showing signs of drug addiction similar to that of Kiedis. For those who just want to be entertained, pick it up because your jaw will be bruised by the end of it for how many times it will hit the floor.
Some highlights of the book are as follows. None of these are really spoilers, but if you are one of those who likes to preserve the magic and integrity of a new read, then just skip ahead to the conclusion.
-- Kiedis, at the age of 11, had sex for the very first time with his dad's "girlfriend". It was in his bedroom at his dad's house.
-- At the ripe old age of 12, Kiedis smoked pot and dropped acid. He said that the acid trip was one of the best experiences he's ever had.
-- In high school, Kiedis attempted to jump off a building into a swimming pool with his friend. He missed the pool and broke his back. Six weeks later, his friend busted him out of the hospital despite the doctor's best wishes.
-- While spending time in Michigan with his mom, Kiedis got belligerently drunk one night after having a dry spell of coke. Attempting to get in his car and drive home, he smash into a tree just miles down the road and completely broke his face. He sang on tour a week later.
This man took Life by the gonads and told it to give him all its Skittles. I couldn't believe what I was reading at times, and what was more, I couldn't believe it was all true! Kiedis created his own mountaintop out of drugs and partying and yet was a complete success by all standards of the definition. Pick up Scar Tissue today and settle back with your acid strips and bongs for a great summer read!
-- Zach
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
The Summer Update (You'll Want to Read This)
Welcome back friends, lovers and everything in between! It's been a while. How are you? That's great to hear. Now that we've gotten the formalities out of the way I've decided to write a little something while Spence is out of the office getting us coffee and new candles (we haven't paid the bills in a while). We realize that while summer has graced us with beautiful weather and suspicious ice cream truck drivers with the word "HATER" tattooed on their necks, we here at Whiskey Before Breakfast have not been delivering reviews as consistently as we would like to. Don't get us wrong, we've been reading a lot of great stuff, we're just having trouble finding the time finishing that great stuff. This partially our fault and more partially not. We don't know what the "partially not" is, but we feel good about it so we'll go with it.
This post wasn't written to ask if we're doing our jobs or not. No, instead it was written to involve you, our beloved fans and fellow readers, in all the great things this blog allows us to do. Besides bringing you eye-melting, mind-incinerating, awesome reviews of the books we've been reading, we've also extended the invitation for you to converse with us in our comments section (which, as we see, you've all taken full advantage of *sarcasm*). That's all well and good, but I still feel like there's something lacking in this blog. It's that feeling you get while listening to a Ke$ha song or when talking about Lance Armstrong's biking career. Okay, maybe not that, but there's still something missing from this blog that we have only recently come to a conclusion on.
Starting this upcoming week (or roughly around that time...it's us after all) we are going start writing posts that include tips, books, videos, letters, speeches, telegrams, smoke signals and any other mediums of communication that have to do with anything literature related or writing related. In other words: NEW CONTENT!
Now, you may think this all sounds pretty vague, and quite honestly, it probably is. But, isn't there a saying out there that says "vagueness breeds creativity"? Well, there should be. In order to bring a little more "BAM" to this blog like Emeril Lagasse's tater tots, we want to start providing resources and exciting content on how to both improve your literary awareness as well as your writing skills so you can finally finish that eulogy for your dead hamster. This, like what was stated above, can include books on writing or videos or even tips from the backwaters of our own sleep deprived and slightly insane minds. It also gives you a chance to apply some of our nonsense to your own repertoire and see what comes of it. We're not saying we're always right (we are), but maybe somewhere amidst the smoldering pile of ash that were once our ideas you may find something to dust off and take home to put on your shelf. The sky's the limit here.
Hopefully you're as excited about the new content as we are. There should be a new section link in the upcoming days that will be strictly devoted to the new content in order to make it easier to find. I hear Spence coming up the stairs now and he won't like it that I'm not wearing pants in his favorite chair. Until next time.
-- Zach
This post wasn't written to ask if we're doing our jobs or not. No, instead it was written to involve you, our beloved fans and fellow readers, in all the great things this blog allows us to do. Besides bringing you eye-melting, mind-incinerating, awesome reviews of the books we've been reading, we've also extended the invitation for you to converse with us in our comments section (which, as we see, you've all taken full advantage of *sarcasm*). That's all well and good, but I still feel like there's something lacking in this blog. It's that feeling you get while listening to a Ke$ha song or when talking about Lance Armstrong's biking career. Okay, maybe not that, but there's still something missing from this blog that we have only recently come to a conclusion on.
Starting this upcoming week (or roughly around that time...it's us after all) we are going start writing posts that include tips, books, videos, letters, speeches, telegrams, smoke signals and any other mediums of communication that have to do with anything literature related or writing related. In other words: NEW CONTENT!
Now, you may think this all sounds pretty vague, and quite honestly, it probably is. But, isn't there a saying out there that says "vagueness breeds creativity"? Well, there should be. In order to bring a little more "BAM" to this blog like Emeril Lagasse's tater tots, we want to start providing resources and exciting content on how to both improve your literary awareness as well as your writing skills so you can finally finish that eulogy for your dead hamster. This, like what was stated above, can include books on writing or videos or even tips from the backwaters of our own sleep deprived and slightly insane minds. It also gives you a chance to apply some of our nonsense to your own repertoire and see what comes of it. We're not saying we're always right (we are), but maybe somewhere amidst the smoldering pile of ash that were once our ideas you may find something to dust off and take home to put on your shelf. The sky's the limit here.
Hopefully you're as excited about the new content as we are. There should be a new section link in the upcoming days that will be strictly devoted to the new content in order to make it easier to find. I hear Spence coming up the stairs now and he won't like it that I'm not wearing pants in his favorite chair. Until next time.
-- Zach
Wednesday, May 8, 2013
Where Things Come Back
Welcome back lovers and bloggers! I would love to take the time to update you on our lives here at Whiskey Before Breakfast, but I simply can't because I would like to dive right into the review of Where Things Come Back by John Corey Whaley. The reason being is that I think this will mark the first time a negative book review will be done by our blog. So let's get started.
As you know from my previous post on Looking for Alaska I am a fan of young adult fiction novels. If you didn't know that then you should go back and read that review. So, in the spirit of the genre I decided to purchase a lesser known work by John Corey Whaley who fairly recently came out with his debut novel Where Things Come Back. My process for purchasing said work was solely based on the cover and a brief reading of the inside flap. There was something about it that had an inviting and benevolent feel to it. And although it had piles of interesting and page turning material to work with, it utterly failed.
It's the story of Cullen Witter who lives in the godforsaken town of Lily, Arkansas where there is nothing to do and is described as a place that you would move to a short time before you die. It's the archetypal dull town of the south that most young adult fiction novels take place (such as When Zachary Beaver Came to Town) and the kids are forced to cope with the drudgery of life. The thing is, there is a lot happening in Lily ever since a massive woodpecker, known as the Lazarus woodpecker, was reportedly sighted in the backwoods of the town and not to mention that Cullen's younger brother, Gabriel, has gone missing. With the combination of these two events the reader should be pumped to dive into the story, but what they soon find is that they are wading into an ankle high pool of terrible writing and underdeveloped plot lines. It was like buying Gushers only to find that all the goo on the inside had been sucked completely dry.
Whaley tells the story in an interesting way where the chapters alternate between the first-person point of view with Cullen and the third-person point of view of a parallel story line that starts with a missionary boy named Benton Sage. To be completely honest, I was more interesting in the third-person point of view story than I was with anything Cullen had to say. Cullen's story line was too flat and repetitive. He is a seventeen-year-old boy who somehow gets laid twice in the book, but he himself claims to be awkward and no ladies man. Also, Whaley decides to start about 90 percent of Cullen's paragraphs with the phrase "When one is..." in order to escape the limited first-person point of view. Look, if you're going to tell a story from a certain point of view, at least stay true to its nature and don't try and find cheap ways to get around it so you can fill your reader in on other characters' traits or behaviors that you forgot to mention earlier in the story.
The writing was horrifyingly awful during the parts that Cullen was telling the story. Actually, I found myself skipping some of Cullen's sections in order to read more of the parallel story that was going on, not because it was written any better, but because it was actually interesting. Here is how I can sum up Cullen's parts for you: "My name is Cullen, not to be mistaken for Edward Cullen, and I'm sad because I had a great relationship with my younger brother that actually wasn't developed much in the story and you should be sad with me. Also, I'm kind of a dick to my best friend who tries to help me through the loss of my brother, but I would rather just hook up with two random girls who play no significant part to the story." You can now skip those parts.
Okay, so I might be laying into Whaley's debut book a little too much and must give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he hasn't been in the game of authorship long enough to know the "do's" and "don'ts" of young adult fiction. Yet, Mark Twain once wrote, "Show, don't tell" and apparently Whaley skipped that eighth grade English class. He left nothing up to the imagination or for the reader to figure out because when he would mention or allude to something that could allow the reader to develop his own thoughts, he would immediately explain what he meant in the next sentence or paragraph. You're not stretched in this novel because the author won't allow you to think outside of the world of his story.
One final note on the work was that Whaley had a tendency to fail with description or just word choice in general. At many times when characters would be speaking, Whaley would revert to the "hyphen tactic" as I like to call it. Here's an example: "'What happened?' I asked in that I-hope-it's-okay-if-I-talk-right-now kind of way." Oh really? As opposed to what other kind of way when you ask a question? Were you speaking in the way where you hope you don't talk about the question you just asked? Another case is when Cullen's best friend Lucas is trying to get him to run a race and is being insistent on the subject. Cullen describes Lucas' look as that "waiting-for-me-to-give-in-to-his-odd-request-and-just-go-with-the-flow sort of look on his face." Thank you John, I wouldn't have been able to guess the look on an insistent person's face unless you would have hyphenated sixteen words together. Believe it or not, this is a common occurrence.
Overall, this novel just didn't have any gusto. The message was lost in the stagnant and flat writing of Whaley. It was sad when I finished the work, not because of the ending (which, actually was one of the strongest parts), but because there was so much material to work with, but never developed. I think Cullen actually summed up this novel perfectly when he said that "all I felt like doing was fading into the background." And the background is where this work shall fade.
-- Zach
As you know from my previous post on Looking for Alaska I am a fan of young adult fiction novels. If you didn't know that then you should go back and read that review. So, in the spirit of the genre I decided to purchase a lesser known work by John Corey Whaley who fairly recently came out with his debut novel Where Things Come Back. My process for purchasing said work was solely based on the cover and a brief reading of the inside flap. There was something about it that had an inviting and benevolent feel to it. And although it had piles of interesting and page turning material to work with, it utterly failed.
It's the story of Cullen Witter who lives in the godforsaken town of Lily, Arkansas where there is nothing to do and is described as a place that you would move to a short time before you die. It's the archetypal dull town of the south that most young adult fiction novels take place (such as When Zachary Beaver Came to Town) and the kids are forced to cope with the drudgery of life. The thing is, there is a lot happening in Lily ever since a massive woodpecker, known as the Lazarus woodpecker, was reportedly sighted in the backwoods of the town and not to mention that Cullen's younger brother, Gabriel, has gone missing. With the combination of these two events the reader should be pumped to dive into the story, but what they soon find is that they are wading into an ankle high pool of terrible writing and underdeveloped plot lines. It was like buying Gushers only to find that all the goo on the inside had been sucked completely dry.
Whaley tells the story in an interesting way where the chapters alternate between the first-person point of view with Cullen and the third-person point of view of a parallel story line that starts with a missionary boy named Benton Sage. To be completely honest, I was more interesting in the third-person point of view story than I was with anything Cullen had to say. Cullen's story line was too flat and repetitive. He is a seventeen-year-old boy who somehow gets laid twice in the book, but he himself claims to be awkward and no ladies man. Also, Whaley decides to start about 90 percent of Cullen's paragraphs with the phrase "When one is..." in order to escape the limited first-person point of view. Look, if you're going to tell a story from a certain point of view, at least stay true to its nature and don't try and find cheap ways to get around it so you can fill your reader in on other characters' traits or behaviors that you forgot to mention earlier in the story.
The writing was horrifyingly awful during the parts that Cullen was telling the story. Actually, I found myself skipping some of Cullen's sections in order to read more of the parallel story that was going on, not because it was written any better, but because it was actually interesting. Here is how I can sum up Cullen's parts for you: "My name is Cullen, not to be mistaken for Edward Cullen, and I'm sad because I had a great relationship with my younger brother that actually wasn't developed much in the story and you should be sad with me. Also, I'm kind of a dick to my best friend who tries to help me through the loss of my brother, but I would rather just hook up with two random girls who play no significant part to the story." You can now skip those parts.
Okay, so I might be laying into Whaley's debut book a little too much and must give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he hasn't been in the game of authorship long enough to know the "do's" and "don'ts" of young adult fiction. Yet, Mark Twain once wrote, "Show, don't tell" and apparently Whaley skipped that eighth grade English class. He left nothing up to the imagination or for the reader to figure out because when he would mention or allude to something that could allow the reader to develop his own thoughts, he would immediately explain what he meant in the next sentence or paragraph. You're not stretched in this novel because the author won't allow you to think outside of the world of his story.
One final note on the work was that Whaley had a tendency to fail with description or just word choice in general. At many times when characters would be speaking, Whaley would revert to the "hyphen tactic" as I like to call it. Here's an example: "'What happened?' I asked in that I-hope-it's-okay-if-I-talk-right-now kind of way." Oh really? As opposed to what other kind of way when you ask a question? Were you speaking in the way where you hope you don't talk about the question you just asked? Another case is when Cullen's best friend Lucas is trying to get him to run a race and is being insistent on the subject. Cullen describes Lucas' look as that "waiting-for-me-to-give-in-to-his-odd-request-and-just-go-with-the-flow sort of look on his face." Thank you John, I wouldn't have been able to guess the look on an insistent person's face unless you would have hyphenated sixteen words together. Believe it or not, this is a common occurrence.
Overall, this novel just didn't have any gusto. The message was lost in the stagnant and flat writing of Whaley. It was sad when I finished the work, not because of the ending (which, actually was one of the strongest parts), but because there was so much material to work with, but never developed. I think Cullen actually summed up this novel perfectly when he said that "all I felt like doing was fading into the background." And the background is where this work shall fade.
-- Zach
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)