Talk about a feeling shift from the last read!
Keir is a good guy. He does the right thing. People like him and he likes that people like him. He has two older sisters who know that he is a good guy, and he has a dad who knows that he is a good guy. So why is Gigi Boudakian screaming at him? He's known her since kindergarten, for God's sake. He loves her and there's no way that he could hurt her. There's certainly no way that he could rape her! He's not some random pervert - he's practically her best friend.
Layer by layer the reader gets to see Keir. Or at least see Keir as Keir sees Keir. He does things to the letter of the law. It is all black and white to him.
Lynch has brilliantly written this character so that he sees himself virtually in the third person. The reader doesn't initially see the drinking and drug use and hazing. The reader doesn't question why his sisters do not return home often. The close relationship between father and son doesn't seem so particularly disfunctional. At first.
I think this is Lynch's best work since the Blue Eyed Son trilogy way back when I first became a YA librarian. I hate Keir for what he does and who he is, but the s-o-b has me feeling sorry for him. Amazing!
1 comment:
I was reading your back posts and came across the one about To Kill A Mockingbird, and you requested suggestions for other American classics. Possibly written off by some snobs as simply 60s psychadelia, I'll recommend "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" by Tom Wolfe. This book changed everything I thought about writing and journalism. And I'll also recommend A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley. This one was made into a film starring all sorts of Hollywood big-shots, but don't let the movie treatment dissuade you from the book: this is one of those novels where HOW things are said is ultimately far more important than what is said, and I remember hearing they were going to make a movie of it and thinking that it's a mistake to make films of books that are truly written for readers. As this one is.
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