- Paperback: 160 pages
- Publisher: Puffin Books; New edition edition (4 July 2002)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0141314443
- ISBN-13: 978-0141314440
- Product Dimensions: 19.4 x 12.8 x 1.2 cm
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Amazon Bestsellers Rank:
2,065,936 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #48 in Books > Children's Books > Authors & Illustrators > C > Cormier, Robert
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Product Description
Product Description
A seven-year-old girl is brutally murdered and a twelve-year-old boy named Jason was the last person to see her alive - except of course, for the killer. Unless Jason is the killer. A high-profile case follows, and everyone wants answers, including a powerful senator. The police call in an expert interrogator, a man named Trent, a man who always gets a confession. When Jason and Trent come face to face the battle for the truth commences.
About the Author
Robert Cormier, originally a journalist, wrote fiction for young adults for many years. His work is known for its devastating honesty. He has achieved success on both sides of the Atlantic, winning many prizes for his writing. Robert Cormier lived most of his life in Massachussetts. He died in 2000.
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75 reviews
8 of 9 people found the following review helpful
The usual Cormier blend of compassion and cruelty...
21 Nov 2001
Format:Hardcover
Reading Cormier's swan song is all the sadder for knowing it's his swan song. His time to be re-evaluated as a master of fiction, not just a master of young-adult fiction, is long overdue. In any event, the bulk of this one is a prolonged and bruising interrogation. A seven-year-old girl has been found murdered. Twelve-year-old Jason Dorrant is the prime suspect, though there's no 'physical evidence' to link him to the crime. Trent, a hotshot interrogator brought in to speed the case to closure, grills the boy. This being Cormier, you're pretty sure Jason is innocent, but only pretty sure. Hence the compassion and cruelty of Cormier's method -- sometimes when reading the latest Cormier book (including this one) you'd sort of get mad at him for creating such likable, sympathetic characters and then putting them into the meat grinder. But he made you care, so it was impossible to stay mad even if you hated what happened to the good people in his work.
This is classic Cormier -- childhood innocence broken on the rack of adult corruption (the town officials want to point the finger at Jason because they want SOMEONE to take the fall); sensitive and alert rendering of shifting moods and thoughts (Cormier's books have always been too interiorized to allow for good movie adaptations; I wouldn't want to see Hollywood attempt this one); the sense that evil often prevails, but that doesn't mean good shouldn't try anyway; and, most vividly, one of the most chilling final lines in all of Cormier. I sort of wish Cormier had left us with something a little more optimistic, but he was never particularly optimistic, just realistic. And his complex portrait of Trent -- as a man who has grown to hate what he does and who he is, but does it anyway because it's necessary and he happens to be skilled at it -- separates Cormier from many youth-flattering authors who indulge in easy kids=good, adults=bad equations. Cormier was about the messier arithmetic of the human soul. It's a shame he's not still out there crunching those numbers. He will be missed.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
For older teens: a quick read that packs a punch
1 July 2002
Format:Hardcover
The Rag and Bone Shop, Robert Cormier's last book before his death, is not for the young or faint of heart.
Interrogated by an expert, 12 yr. old Jason cannot avoid linking himself to the murdered 7 yr old. Does what he say cause him to become someone different? In the windowless interrogation room he perceives the double-edged sword of reality and its underlying currents of suspicion and need. This book is for mature readers because the seemingly simple story twists and turns into a stark fatal attraction. Are truth and justice found in the rag and bone shop? The suspense builds with each answer that Jason gives. Like writing an epitaph on a tombstone, author Robert Cormier lures the reader into formulating and answering a poignant question. And not until the end does he...reader, this is a master at work; you'll not want to close the cover of this powerful, slim book.
Interrogated by an expert, 12 yr. old Jason cannot avoid linking himself to the murdered 7 yr old. Does what he say cause him to become someone different? In the windowless interrogation room he perceives the double-edged sword of reality and its underlying currents of suspicion and need. This book is for mature readers because the seemingly simple story twists and turns into a stark fatal attraction. Are truth and justice found in the rag and bone shop? The suspense builds with each answer that Jason gives. Like writing an epitaph on a tombstone, author Robert Cormier lures the reader into formulating and answering a poignant question. And not until the end does he...reader, this is a master at work; you'll not want to close the cover of this powerful, slim book.
10 of 12 people found the following review helpful
An economy of words, an exacting story!
19 Jan 2002
Format:Hardcover
Robert Cormier doesn't waste words. In his lifetime, he penned over 25 young adult novels...each one a gem in its own right. With "Rag and Bone Shop", he delves into darker territory with a precise economy of words, but doesn't ignore the deep emotional territory on which he treads...or at least his characters.
Telling the tale of Jason Dorrant, a middle-school youngster who is accused of killing his friends younger sister, Alicia Bartlett, Cormier drives the story along quickly and deftly. In a political (aren't they all?) manuever, local officials bring in Trent, an ace interrigator, who is known for eliciting confessions from even the most innocent suspects. Jason is brought into the local police station, and sequestered with Trent, who is undergoing some personal doubts about himself, the fairly recent death of his wife, and about the young man he is hired to make confess.
Cormier handles this taut, suspenseful story with guts and grit, drawing his characters with broad strokes, but making them feel like we've known them for some time.
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