- Jubilee offer: spend £10 or more on any product sold by Amazon.co.uk on or before June 6 and you can buy The Diamond Jubilee A Classical Celebration Album for just £2.50 Here's how (terms and conditions apply)
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Did you know you can trade in your old books for an Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to spend on the things you want? Plus, get an extra £5 Gift Certificate when you trade in books worth £10 or more before June 30, 2012. Visit the Books Trade-In Store for more details. |
Special Offers and Product Promotions
Frequently Bought Together
Product details
|
More About the Author
Inside This Book
(Learn More)
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This story is a dog. Well, no, that's a little bit of a lie. Really, it's quite a bit of a lie, as this story lies well away from the area of `dogness' and much closer to the area of `excellent'. Actually, this is a story about a dog. Uh, that's not quite the truth either. And the real question of this book is just what is the truth?
Micah is a seventeen year old girl, an outsider, a loner, a misfit, and, in her own words, a compulsive liar. She lies about her sex, about her father's occupation, about her `illness', about not having a boyfriend, about...
And she's the narrator of this story. She insists that she's telling the truth in this, her journal, but it soon becomes obvious that even here, what she's telling isn't the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the complete unvarnished truth. When her (secret) boyfriend is found dead, her reactions and those of the people around her seem almost surreal, her explanations more and more complicated, revised time and time again, with each new explanation revealing another layer of Micah's reality. It becomes a mystery, complete with all the usual suspects, none of whom are really as initially portrayed, most especially Micah herself.
Perhaps what is most compelling about this book is that each version of `reality' that Micah writes about is so believable and logical, until the next version comes along and totally turns everything upside-down again. This is a very great accomplishment; many works with unreliable narrators very quickly make the reader dismiss everything newly narrated as `not true'. Here the suspension of disbelief continues all the way to the end, even though the reader's alert flag is constantly set on `danger, this may not be true'.
The story is not told in total chronological order, but in fairly short sections of Before, After, Family History, and History of Me. The constant change of focus helps with the pacing of this book, and does a bit to add to the suspense (yes, there really is suspense here, too). Michah's `voice' comes across very much as a fairly mature intelligent teenager, and many of the incidents and people at her school will probably bring back sharp memories of similar things and characters in older readers, or as total reality to those near Micah's age. The prose is simple and direct; no long, complicated flights of prose poetry here, and is quite effective. The only real problem I had with this book was the ending, which seemed a little rushed, sugary, and greatly lacking in detail - but it also, and I think deliberately, leaves the reader wondering if that was really the ending.
This is a deft psychological thriller. And that's the truth.
Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Micah is a seventeen year old girl, an outsider, a loner, a misfit, and, in her own words, a compulsive liar. She lies about her sex, about her father's occupation, about her `illness', about not having a boyfriend, about...
And she's the narrator of this story. She insists that she's telling the truth in this, her journal, but it soon becomes obvious that even here, what she's telling isn't the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the complete unvarnished truth. When her (secret) boyfriend is found dead, her reactions and those of the people around her seem almost surreal, her explanations more and more complicated, revised time and time again, with each new explanation revealing another layer of Micah's reality. It becomes a mystery, complete with all the usual suspects, none of whom are really as initially portrayed, most especially Micah herself.
Perhaps what is most compelling about this book is that each version of `reality' that Micah writes about is so believable and logical, until the next version comes along and totally turns everything upside-down again. This is a very great accomplishment; many works with unreliable narrators very quickly make the reader dismiss everything newly narrated as `not true'. Here the suspension of disbelief continues all the way to the end, even though the reader's alert flag is constantly set on `danger, this may not be true'.
The story is not told in total chronological order, but in fairly short sections of Before, After, Family History, and History of Me. The constant change of focus helps with the pacing of this book, and does a bit to add to the suspense (yes, there really is suspense here, too). Michah's `voice' comes across very much as a fairly mature intelligent teenager, and many of the incidents and people at her school will probably bring back sharp memories of similar things and characters in older readers, or as total reality to those near Micah's age. The prose is simple and direct; no long, complicated flights of prose poetry here, and is quite effective. The only real problem I had with this book was the ending, which seemed a little rushed, sugary, and greatly lacking in detail - but it also, and I think deliberately, leaves the reader wondering if that was really the ending.
This is a deft psychological thriller. And that's the truth.
Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)
Format:Paperback
I picked this up purely because the bookshop I was working in had a lot of copies, so it needed a review. Wow, I was hooked. This is the kind of book that I was thinking about for weeks after, and in fact I would like to give it another read to see if I felt I could figure out what really happened. Compelling from the get-go. Admittedly, it got a bit 'weird' in the middle, but I soon suspended my disbelief and got involved again.
I recommended this to many a teenage customer, and several came back and said they had enjoyed it and were looking for similar. Good for those looking for something slightly different from vampire teen fiction.
I recommended this to many a teenage customer, and several came back and said they had enjoyed it and were looking for similar. Good for those looking for something slightly different from vampire teen fiction.
Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
Were these reviews helpful?
Let us know
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
Listmania!
|
|
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
- Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
- I am the Author, and I want to comment on my book.
- I am the Publisher, and I want to comment on this book.
|
