A basic novel. Colin Neenan, a past librarian at Trumbull High School,wrote the novel, Thick, the story of a teenager that winds up in jail for the charge of murder. The novel is modeled for teenagers in high school that are not motivated to pick up a book and read. “THICK is an intense, suspenseful story for people who have a hard time finding a book they want to read,” states the blurb on the back of the book. However, half of the statement is false. Neenan essentially wastes the reader’s time.
The novel begins in jail, with Nick (A.K.A. Thick) narrating the story. One interesting part of the story is that he knows he is guilty, and he even admits to that throughout. “I’m not innocent, I know that and you know that and everyone should know that. I am guilty,” (Pg 4) Nick states very early into the reading. His lawyer asked Nick to write everything down during his 40 year sentence, so he did. This is Nick’s story leading up to the murder.
Nick, the protagonist, writes about many contributing factors that lead up to when he pulled the trigger. Primarily, his general focus on his family, including his struggling older sister and his violent and alcoholic father. Also the death of his mother plays a large, influential role in the story. Some other important characters include one of his friends at school. When Nick’s father unintentionally gets him a job cleaning dishes at a local restaurant, he meets Alice and Sam, more crucial characters to the story.
The events that follow merely lead up to the murder. The novel, plainly, are the contributing factors that lead up to Nick committing a felony. To connect back to the blurb, Neenan does not write an “intense, suspenseful story.” These attributes fulfill the requirements to be a thriller novel. Neenan did not write a thriller, he wrote a basic drama. Emphasise on the word “basic.”
One part of the novel that frustrates me is the author’s voice. To be specific, Neenan’s voice is non-existent. It is very difficult to identify the author’s personality throughout the story because of the fact that his novel represents a very stereotypical dramatic novel. There is no uniqueness to the book; nothing is out of the ordinary nor did anything keep the reader into the book. The suspense is much too dry, contrary to what Neenan wrote in the blurb.
On the other hand, Thick is modeled for high school students that struggle with reading. For those people, I believe that the novel serves the purpose. The plot is an intriguing one, to say the very best. I would recommend this book to someone who does not enjoy to read, but it would take a spot at the end of the list. As a result, Thick gets two out of five Eagles.