Okay this is weird. I never thought I would like a Young Adult book so much. I have made fun of the absurd amount hype associated with them and the hordes of crazy fans who flock in support of their favorite actors who play leads in the movie based out of these books. Some of those actors are really horrible. And some of the books itself are also terribly written. They pick up one unique, and frankly amazing, plot and stretch it to such an extent that they butcher the very thing that made it awesome.
But. This book is something different.
Just like many others I came to know of this book after I'd seen the movie based on it which I'd only seen that because it starred Zach Galifianakis and Emma Roberts. It was a decent movie. Had its own foibles as most YA movies do but some of the dialogues in the movie felt very precise and well structured, which could very well have been taken from a well-written book. This was a clearly YA movie but the characters didn't seemed to know that. The dialogue and plot could have been from any average movie and still work just as good. That got me to pick up the book to see for myself if this change was something that writer of novel intended originally or something the screenwriters pushed into their script. I know now, it was the writer of the novel who wrote them like that.
Author - Ned Vizzini.
Quck note - He himself suffered from clinical depression for most of his life and sadly committed suicide in 2013, at the age of 32.
The book is about a very intelligent overachieving teenager who works his butt off to get into a prestigious New York prep school. And once he is in can't cope with the pressure and stress linked with having to deal with all the work and the lack of social life that comes along it. He starts developing issues relating to people around him. He stops eating or sleeping, and spends all of his waking hours in a limbo worrying about how he can mess his whole life up by failing at this school. He then one night then decides he cannot take it anymore and decides to kill himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Good sense prevails. He somehow manages to call up a suicide hotline and they help him get checked into emergency care. They take him in as a mental patient and put him on suicide watch. But the hospital is under renovation so he is bunked along with the adult ward. That's where the whole story unfolds, a fifteen year old high school kid amidst a bunch of adults with serious mental issues.
In the book seems like there a bunch of homages for real people in the writer's life, in the sense that they are all largely believable. Even the patient who thinks gravity doesn't exist anymore and that anytime now we would all just stop sticking to the Earth and just fall off into the sky. There are a bunch of wonderful ideas and interest experiences where the writer explains the sense of loneliness and hopelessness that someone with this illness would have to face in life. It all feels very frank and straight from the heart. Like how life for someone like this could be so much better for them if they simply just have the love and support of their family and friends.
I really like those parts in any book. The part where the writer says exactly what he feels. No B.S. This book has a lot of that. It is not overdone. Nor overly dramatic. Nor trying to be too funny or hip or in with the crowd. It is just right. (last couple pages notwithstanding)
It is good, mostly so cause I believe it was just being honest. There isn't anything in it that you will feel too jarring or something that would make you think that, yep this is definitely a book written for kids. Cause its not. Sure, it would be a book that would do a world of good to kid, if he/she read it, especially if she thinks she is unworthy. But I suppose this is a book for everyone who thinks that their life is too tough to handle at times.
I'd recommend this book to every newbie readers, in fact all readers even. It is a good story.
And to Mr Vizzini I'd like to say, you had a precious light in you. It is unfortunate that the darkness in you stopped you from seeing it. RIP.
But. This book is something different.
Just like many others I came to know of this book after I'd seen the movie based on it which I'd only seen that because it starred Zach Galifianakis and Emma Roberts. It was a decent movie. Had its own foibles as most YA movies do but some of the dialogues in the movie felt very precise and well structured, which could very well have been taken from a well-written book. This was a clearly YA movie but the characters didn't seemed to know that. The dialogue and plot could have been from any average movie and still work just as good. That got me to pick up the book to see for myself if this change was something that writer of novel intended originally or something the screenwriters pushed into their script. I know now, it was the writer of the novel who wrote them like that.
Author - Ned Vizzini.
Quck note - He himself suffered from clinical depression for most of his life and sadly committed suicide in 2013, at the age of 32.
The book is about a very intelligent overachieving teenager who works his butt off to get into a prestigious New York prep school. And once he is in can't cope with the pressure and stress linked with having to deal with all the work and the lack of social life that comes along it. He starts developing issues relating to people around him. He stops eating or sleeping, and spends all of his waking hours in a limbo worrying about how he can mess his whole life up by failing at this school. He then one night then decides he cannot take it anymore and decides to kill himself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.
Good sense prevails. He somehow manages to call up a suicide hotline and they help him get checked into emergency care. They take him in as a mental patient and put him on suicide watch. But the hospital is under renovation so he is bunked along with the adult ward. That's where the whole story unfolds, a fifteen year old high school kid amidst a bunch of adults with serious mental issues.
In the book seems like there a bunch of homages for real people in the writer's life, in the sense that they are all largely believable. Even the patient who thinks gravity doesn't exist anymore and that anytime now we would all just stop sticking to the Earth and just fall off into the sky. There are a bunch of wonderful ideas and interest experiences where the writer explains the sense of loneliness and hopelessness that someone with this illness would have to face in life. It all feels very frank and straight from the heart. Like how life for someone like this could be so much better for them if they simply just have the love and support of their family and friends.
I really like those parts in any book. The part where the writer says exactly what he feels. No B.S. This book has a lot of that. It is not overdone. Nor overly dramatic. Nor trying to be too funny or hip or in with the crowd. It is just right. (last couple pages notwithstanding)
It is good, mostly so cause I believe it was just being honest. There isn't anything in it that you will feel too jarring or something that would make you think that, yep this is definitely a book written for kids. Cause its not. Sure, it would be a book that would do a world of good to kid, if he/she read it, especially if she thinks she is unworthy. But I suppose this is a book for everyone who thinks that their life is too tough to handle at times.
I'd recommend this book to every newbie readers, in fact all readers even. It is a good story.
And to Mr Vizzini I'd like to say, you had a precious light in you. It is unfortunate that the darkness in you stopped you from seeing it. RIP.
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