Interestingly enough, the last 2 young adults books that I read included both the devil and Jesus in them. The first book, Repossessed by A.M. Jenkins (a Printz honor book) included as its main character, the devil. He takes over the body of a high school boy in order to experience (and enjoy) life on Earth. It was definitely a fun twist to what could have been the usual boy-likes-girl-who-is-out-of-his-league story. Next, I read Chris Crutcher’s latest novel, Deadline. In this story, the main character is dealing with an aggressive form of leukemia and only has one year to live. During this year, he has mystical experiences and dreams that include conversations with one “Hey-soos” character. This novel has A LOT of heavy themes crammed into it: (which isn’t that unusual for a Chris Crutcher book but I thought it was just a little TOO much) pedophilia, incest, life-threatening illnesses, prejudice and racism and more. Again, I can’t help but notice the juxtaposition of the two novels and reading them back to back made the reading experience a bit quirky.
February 22, 2008
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Wow, I’ll bet that was an interesting experience! I had never heard of REPOSSESSED. Maybe I’ll pick it up. I have read Crutcher’s DEADLINE, however, and I agree that it does have a lot of themes in it. I don’t know that it was TOO much. I find that life itself often overflows with unpleasantness- as well as lots of good stuff- but I get what you’re saying. I think that Crutcher relied on the things you mentioned– pedophilia, incest, life-threatening illness, etc.– in order to bring out the message of compassion, of getting outside of ourselves in order to see where others are coming from. It struck me (spoiler alert here for anyone who hasn’t read DEADLINE) that Ben had to realize that he was not, in fact, so much protecting his family from pain as he was trying to keep himself from dealing with the truth.
Anyway, I enjoyed reading your post! Thanks!
Beth Fehlbaum, author
Courage in Patience
http://courageinpatience.blogspot.com
Comment by bethfehlbaum — February 28, 2008 @ 2:12 am