In Awe

by Scott Heim

Sarah, Harriet and Boris are outcasts searching for solace in their own private fantasy worlds. Mourning the recent death of her best friend, Marshall, Sarah tries to find comfort in the countless horror movies she loves. Harriet, Marshall's mother, grieves by immersing herself in the serenity of her farm. Then there is Boris. A sixteen-year-old orphan with dreams of writing the ultimate zombie novel, he spends his nights sneaking away from a youth home and his days dreaming of Rex, a beautiful but savage classmate. It is this fascination that sets in motion a violent chain of events that ultimately tests the boundaries of the three misfits' obsessions and leads the novel to its brutal and startling conclusion. "Nimble, alarming, complex, and lushly written."
-- "New York Post"

"Elegantly written."
-- "Time Out New York"

"[Heim] teases out the pleasures of cruelty in language that scalpels one minute, unfurls lushly the next."
"Village Voice"

"Grand, uncanny, horrific and sweet. . . . Those who give themselves to it will be haunted."
-- "Lambda Book Report"

"Unforgettable. . . . Quite simply, In Awe is awesome: inordinately powerful and alarming, terrifying and breathtaking. A transcendent, bittersweet novel of obsession and pain, love and loathing, memory and desire. Heim is testing the limits of his dynamic, raw vision."
- "Kansas City Star"

"The ripple of danger beneath the surface of Scott Heim's In Awe should serve as a warning to anyone expecting a casual ride: this is a book that means to take you places. A patina of malevolence overhangs Heim's Kansas, and even the quietest moments can have the most terrifying consequences for his trio ofmisfits, Boris, Sarah, and Harriet. The story draws us forward toward its heart like the best of spiderwebs."
--Jim Grimsley

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Gay, Dark, Coming Of Age, Novels

304 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1997

About the author

Scott Heim was born in Hutchinson, Kansas in 1966. He grew up in a small farming community there, and later attended the University of Kansas in Lawrence, earning a B.A. in English and Art History in 1989 and an M.A. in English Literature in 1991. He attended the M.F.A. program in Writing at Columbia University, where he wrote his first novel, Mysterious Skin. HarperCollins published that book in 1995, and Scott followed it with another novel, In Awe, in 1997.

Scott has won fellowships to the London Arts Board as their International Writer-in-Residence, and to the Sundance Screenwriters Lab for his adaptation of Mysterious Skin. He is also the author of a book of poems, Saved From Drowning (1993).

After living eleven years in New York, he relocated to Boston in 2002. Mysterious Skin was adapted for the stage, premiering in San Francisco; it was subsequently adapted to film by director Gregg Araki and Antidote Films. Scott's third novel is We Disappear (HarperCollins), published in February 2008.

Reviews

[Gila Gila · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scott Heim's better known "Mysterious Skin" made me wince, made me uncomfortable - because it was so difficult to look at what he was quietly showing us, unadorned and true. "In Awe" also made me wince, but for precisely the opposite reason; if there's truth here, it's buried under the novel's desperate need to be Cool and Hip; witness a fleshy sex doll/mannequin found floating down a river by a woman obsessed with Carnival of Souls. It's like cheap trick David Lynch. There are rainstorms. The books is soaked, bring a towel. There is a Suffering Box (very different from Suffering Succotash) full of sorrowful memorabilia. There are zombies, only not really, there are both orphans and grieving mothers, there is the sexual abuse of kids and teens, lots of it. Given the author, this shouldn't have been a surprise - and if you're a fan of Scott Heim, it's not a calling card you shy away from, anyway - but there were scenes in this book that were so over the top that I wanted to look away, feeling like I'd inadvertently stumbled behind some bleak curtained corner of porn (SPOILER - where teachers hogtie fifth grade girls and rape them with the handle of a skipping rope)that left me not just upset, but angry with the author. Especially when that piece of storytelling turns out to be just a manipulated exaggeration created by the now adult victim.
Worse is the ridiculous climax, a fireball, literally, of one unbelievable act leading to another. Luckily I was out of matches, or I might have added to the bonfire.
I've only mentioned one out of the three central characters, really - but none of them resonated off the page. Not foster kid Boris who's landed in Juvie, nor his older and only friends, Sarah & Harriet (one of the most awkward passages occurs early on when Boris initially meets these two women in a hospital ward; within 2 pages Sarah is saying to Boris (because he's Weird, just like she's Weird): "You said, 'Who'd want me, right?' Well, forget that ... it's official. You're ours now."
Why did I keep reading after that? Damn it. I could still look a skip rope in the eye if only I'd quit then.

[Jess · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Heim's In Awe is a beautifully strange, often disturbing, novel about three very different people, each trying to cope with the death of their friend/son Marshall in a community unforgiving of their eccentricities and their grief. Sarah, Marshall's best friend, is a horror movie fan living in an abandoned golf range, re-enacting horror scenes and imagining herself as the final girl heroine while offering consolation and support to Harriet. Harriet, Marshall's mother, lives alone on her small property, convinced she is hearing Marshall from across the hallway. Boris is a 16 year old orphan, struggling with his sexuality and attempting to write a revenge slash zombie novel. Together the three have a unique friendship, forming a small battalion against the community which openly shuns them and their grief.

In Awe is not a perfect novel, at times it is agonizingly overwritten, but then Heim will hit you with disturbing imagery written in a beautiful way - from Sarah's fantasies of her past as relayed to Boris, to abused mannequins washing up in the flood waters. Though there is supposed to be shifts in perspective between the three characters and Boris' novel excerpts, this shift isn't at all reflected in the narrative voice. And yet, these characters haunt you. Their odd behaviour comes to seem, as manifestations of their grief, understandable.

Heim clearly understands the pain of being overtly different in largely conservative circles, and refuses to gloss over the reactions that stem from this visibility. Instead, he presents the brutality of the resentment of others, the simmering violence that finally comes to fruition is painful to read. Not much, really, happens until the last third of the novel, and when it does it is difficult to let go. In Awe is an imperfect, unsettling novel exploring themes of desire, death, grief and social isolation.

Best read on a night of heavy rains & storms.

[Heather · Rating 2 out of 5]

I actually finished this some time ago but was so void of reaction that I just set it aside and moved on.

Like many others, Mysterious Skin (my thoughts) was my introduction to Scott Heim; I loved its simplicity and utter lack of pretension. In Awe is its opposite - a story that, at the core, is rather simple, but its events and characters struggle under the weight of muddled, purple prose. While its theme of isolation is clear, I should not have had to work so hard to give a damn about Boris, Sarah, and Harriet. And I'm not sure I did when all was said and done.

Not that there isn't a gem here and there - Heim can still turn a phrase just so, and it's why I'll be sure to read anything he writes. But this was a disappointment.

[Djrmel · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a dark, bleak, sad, heavy story of friendship between three outsiders in contemporary rural Kansas. Scott Heim's first book was Mysterious Skin, and somehow Heim has found a way to go to an even blacker place of love and hate than he did the first time around. The sense of place is amazing (I don't think there's a color or smell or sound that Heim can't bring to life with his words) and the characters are laid wide open, sometimes telling their own stories, sometimes through stories that they write down for Boris, a teenage boy with a doomed crush, to use for a writing contest. The other characters, Harriet, a widow not doing a very good job coping with the recent death of her only son; and Sarah, a close friend of the dead son and now a sort of mentor to Boris, both enable each other and Boris in a journey that can't end well. If this all sounds too depressing for you to read, it probably is.

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a lushly written story, with three wonderful characters, all horribly broken in some way, united by the death of a man who died of AIDS. The descriptions of rural Kansas are breathtaking in a way only a native Kansan can illustrate with words. The dreams and aspirations of the characters are heartfelt and the bond they share is enviable. Once you start this, you will know something awful is going to happen but you won't really understand until the very end when it screeches and crashes into the ditch. It made me cry tears of joy, sorrow, and pity.

[Indigo · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sort of like if Saltburm was set in the Midwest and was much, much more genuine and also sadder. Heim’s writing is impeccable and the characters are so rich

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

i would actually give this one and half stars if i could. there are some nice moments throughout but overall a real let down, especially when compared to mysterious skin, which had all the bizarre small town elements this aspires to have, but fails. terrible ending, overwrought. there is a frame to this story written by a 17 year old,desperately lonely and outcast. now, when there is a frame like this, the reader should be able to differinate between the narrator in the story and scott heim, the writer, but the two blur here and not to good affect. i want to like this book because of its themes, outcasts in backwoods america, horror movies, the underbelly to small town life. but this book demonizes the townspeople in a rather unrealistic way. i really don't think that the town would want to push harriet, an odd, elderly widow, around. i hope that heim grows past this and has exorcised those demons that beat the shit out of him in his small town kansas high school.

[Si Meadows · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yet another unflinching book from the mastermind of making me feel things.
It's hard exactly to write a review for books that genuinely make me go on a roller-coaster ride yo-yoing from disgust to awe, to anger and sadness. It's by no means not everyone's cup of tea, but I would urge brave readers of contemporary fiction to give it a ruddy good try.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

Scott Heim’s 1997 novel In Awe explores themes of isolation, grief, and the consequences of individuality in an uncaring, and often violent, small town. Set in rural Kansas, In Awe follows three socially misplaced characters: Boris, Sarah, and Harriet. The book focuses on how each character reacts to the death of Marshall, who dies of complications from AIDS at the beginning of the novel, and much of the concentration of In Awe centers on Marshall. Heim does an amazing job of fully developing Marshall’s character, even though he is never in the novel’s present-day sections. Instead, readers experience Marshall only in flashback sequences. Despite this, his presence and his effect on the novel’s three principle characters seem to form the emotional meat of the text. One of the most interesting aspects about In Awe is the way Marshall’s death affects his mother, Harriet. In order to examine Harriet’s grief, it is necessary to briefly look at three distinct views of grief that Heim eloquently illustrates in In Awe: how Harriet copes with her own grief, how Boris and Sarah respond to Harriet’s grief, and the way Harriet’s apathetic community adds to her grief.
The nature of Harriet’s grief seems to mirror the turbulent Kansas landscape, which In Awe evokes with vivid, disturbing detail. For example, much of the atmosphere in In Awe is dark, rainy, and expectant, as if a violent force is looking for a dramatic outlet. Heim’s descriptions of the Kansas landscape as a threatening entity increase as the novel progresses, and the novel’s finale unleashes a powerful storm that parallels the forces that are changing the lives of Heim’s characters.
Throughout the first half of the novel, Harriet’s grief is dammed. As Sarah remarks early in the novel, “I haven’t seen her cry yet….” Harriet seems to have trouble exploring her inner landscape of grief. She visits places Marshall used to frequent, and, at one point in the novel, she awkwardly climbs into the tire swing that was Marshall’s when he was a child. The swing is located near a pond, and Harriet navigates the swing until she is over the pond, as if she is trying to fly away from her loss.
Harriet’s emotional damn bursts when she discovers one of her cats has been run over by a car. In one disturbing scene, Harriet “hunches over the animal, shielding it with her body.” Boris, who watches Harriet’s breakdown, remembers a parallel scene in the hospital shortly before Marshall died, when Harriet was “hunched over her son with motherly grace.” Harriet then presses her body into the cat and begins repeating “Marshall” as she caresses the cat’s dead carcass. The prose is both moving and absurd, which is the way Harriet is often portrayed.
Following Marshall’s death, Harriet receives support from Boris and Sarah---help she does not get from her community. For instance, Sarah calls Harriet several times a day to make sure she is all right. These scenes are made more poignant by the fact that when Sarah calls Harriet, it is still Marshall’s voice on the answering machine. Supporting Harriet often proves difficult for Sarah. Marshall was Sarah’s best friend, and she tries to balance managing her own grief while supporting Harriet. Perhaps this is best exemplified when Sarah, looking at Harriet, thinks: “She (Sarah) knows with frantic certainty what Harriet hasn’t yet comprehended. She knows that Marshall is never coming back; that, no matter how hard she clenches her teeth or fists, how stiff she mixes her drinks, he is gone…he won’t be back!”
Together, Sarah and Boris represent tangible crutches and outlets for Harriet’s grief. In fact, the only moments of tenderness and empathy in In Awe exist among Sarah, Boris, Harriet, and Marshall. Their role as outcasts unites them against a town that Heim illustrates much in the same way he describes the Kansas landscape and Harriet’s own grief---as elements that build until they are unleashed with violent, disturbing consequences. To illustrate this, the novel opens with Boris, Harriet, and Sarah leaving Marshall’s hospital right after Marshall’s doctor told Sarah Marshall’s life was “fading.” When the characters step onto the hospital’s parking lot, they discover that Sarah’s car has been vandalized. Graffitied across her car in black, blue, and white spray paint are phrases such as “SMELLY OLD CRAZY GRANMA…QUEERS…TRASH MOTHERFUCKERS.”
In In Awe Scott Heim describes backwater Kansas as a place where anyone who is different is wrong and, therefore, subject to the harshest consequences of verbal abuse and physical violence. This community neither gives Harriet have time to grieve nor recognizes her loss. For example, five days after Marshall dies, the novel’s three principle characters attend a carnival. For most of the evening Harriet is able to forget her grief as she enjoys the carnival’s rides, exhibits, and festivities. However, at one point during the evening, she accidentally bumps into a man. Although neither Boris, Sarah, nor Harriet know the man personally, he immediately recognizes the trio as the town’s outcasts and resident freaks. He pushes Harriet and calls her a “crazy old bitch.” Then, after looking at Boris with contempt, he snarls, “What happened to the other faggot?” Scenes like this clearly show a community that doesn’t respect one’s losses or differences---an environment where anything that is unusual must be beaten into invisibility.
.

[Ian Cann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm not quite sure what to make of In Awe. As with Mysterious Skin, Scott Heim has crafted this strange dark underbelly of rural American life, though with an odd magic to his prose.

Though events are just as horrifying if not at times more so than in MS, the third person narration presented on In Awe's pages grants the reader a certain remove that the first narration of Mysterious Skin denies one.

Questions about family, abuse, connections and importantly how and why we build and choose to build memories are dealt with here, oft times in the most unflinching manner again with no easy answers.

[Sara Williams · Rating 3 out of 5]

Heim's writing style always leaves my hungry for the next sentece - it most definitely isn't the easiest to follow - but his words are full of elegantly put metaphors and figures of speech that will make your heart quake. In 'In Awe' we follow three characters: Boris, Sarah and Harriet, all of them outcasts and put away for one reason or another. They all embrace with each other more at the death of Marshall, Sarah's childhood friend and Harriet's son, Boris he only met at the hospital. We follow Boris' intense passion for punk-driven Rex and his completion of the 'Suffering Box', his blind devotion to this body of bones that had nothing to offer him, we follow Harriet's insanity after her son's death and her dead will to have him back at all costs and Sarah, savage and young, her body wanted by all human boys, succumbing away to loneliness and often reffering to her past.
Heim is complicated, not unreadable, of course, but complicated because he approches raw themes with naturality. His descriptions, often disturbing and explained to the detail put you on the scene, standing next to these broken characters, making you feel as if you are a broken character yourself. At times it definitely dragged, leaving you exhausted and in need to put the book down but don't, it is definitely worth it. The story in itself is probably the weakest link for me, I didn't find anything that exciting happening but as I mentioned before, the path to get to the end of the book is dazzling, the characters well built and passionate, irrevocably doomed in their own pain and their past, and for that, I praise Scott Heim.
And now I'll just cry myself to sleep because I've read all his books.

[Aurora Dimitre · Rating 4 out of 5]

After finishing this book, the loudest thought running through my head is UM

And that's kind of what I expect from Scott Heim--I mean, Mysterious Skin wasn't exactly a nice walk in the park--but man, am I glad that this one was better than We Disappear. This book gave me what I expect from this author, which is incredibly messed up and uncomfortable and strange and UM

Out of the three main characters, I think Sarah was my favorite, but Boris was the most interesting. Boris made me really, really uncomfortable though, especially near the end, so Sarah's my favorite, because she was interesting and also didn't make me feel terrible. Harriet was, unfortunately, kind of boring, especially compared to the other two. I mean, she was fine. Just not as interesting.

One of the only negatives of this book could be how slow it started. Heim's writing style is very thick-paragraphed-and-flowery, and that didn't really work for the first couple chapters of the book. But it did work for the big, climactic scenes later on. So the book started a little bit slow, but there are a couple of scenes that I'm going to remember forever. Because this was. An interesting one. And I did really enjoy it. But like. Jesus.

[Simon · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Awe by Scott Heim (Harper perennial)
I was given this book a christmas or two ago and
it finally got read in Berlin. I'm not sure if I
would have finished it had I read it at home as
it had the effect of sending me to sleep on
several occasions!
The book is very well written in a very poetic
prose style and is about growing up weird in
Lawrence Kansas in the 80's and 90's, but it's
also a Zomibe thriller and a AIDS memento mori
with some very sick and twisted happenings in
the care system of Kansas.It works towards a
messy revenge fantasy ending that did wrongfoot
me. While I tried to work out if I cared for the
caracters while they were being abused or was I
just being confused I didn't really get a grip
on the book, but was still shocked when I found
out what the test tube on the cover of the book
was all about.
Not sure if I want to read anything else Scott
has written but kind of glad I read this one
although unless you like the subject matter
mentioned above not sure I'd recommend it
either, it's certainly not for the easily
shocked or homophobic readers.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

This could easily be a one-word review: wow. But I'll elaborate a bit further... It was disturbing, mesmerising. There was always this undercurrent of conflicting feelings for every character. Strong protagonists you could sympathise with... almost. Until they did something you just couldn't quite understand or forgive them for. The villains were horrid and creepy and... pitiful. Or just ambiguously villainous.
I think the only thing that tainted the read for me was too much meaningless bad stuff happening to animals. And the really failed attempts to describe the horse in the pasture. (I loved the part where Sarah goes to ride him in the middle of the night, and... 'unbuckles the martingale.' huh?)
Most of the way through it felt like a boy's coming-of-age story and the sad descent of a failed fag hag. But that ending. damn. I think that will stay with me for a long time. In the end it was a story about life. And death. And how we stand in awe of both.
Amazing.
Highly recommended if you... can stomach it. It's not for the faint of heart.

[Ryan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's the deal. Objectively I know this book isn't great. It has many shortcomings. Among them: It's pace is trudgey (for the first two thirds). One of the main characters is kind of one-dimensional. The excerpts that are supposed to be written by the characters lack any change of voice. There's more.

But somehow (read: subjectively) I'm able to overlook the flaws and fall in love with Heim's sumptuous details. He has an uncanny knack for describing the life I knew growing up. I KNOW these characters. I know their fatal flaws. I've met them. I've been these people. I've seen these places. Driven those roads. I've done the things they do. I know where they're coming from. He is dead-on in his character development.

There's nothing really revelatory here. But if you give in to the world he creates, there are rewards. Specifically the last hundred pages or so.

Oh. And I learned the word locular.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

Like most readers, I was drawn to this book for the author and his previous work - Mysterious Skin.

This is not of the same quality. There was heaps of rambling poetic prose, an unrealistic and shameful ending. There were moments when I was really engrossed and really wanted to know what was coming up but as another reviewer put it - it's hard to tell the difference between the author and the narrator.

It was hard to connect to the characters. There was no redemption or saving grace or even comic relief. Even without those things there didn't feel like a fair justification for the all the darkness within.

[Matthew Russell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Though Mysterious Skin was a life-changing read, I somehow loved this book even more. Its characters are even more outcasts, underdogs, like perpetual orphans who only ever belong with each other. There are elements of suspense and horror to combine with the complicated matters of the heart, which tug every bit as deeply as the former novel. It's darker, more challenging, less accessible, and yet just as affecting for those willing to take that journey. This book holds a very special spot in my heart.

[Alan Pottinger · Rating 1 out of 5]

I very rarely give up on books but life's too short and although I enjoyed mysterious skin by this chap 'In Awe' is a tad pretentious in its writing style and I can't be bothered to pick my way through his prose!

[David Corvine · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing piece of work when compared to Mysterious Skin. The interesting content could have been delivered in 150 pages. The rest of it consists of tedious discriptions of the weather and the rural setting. Much of it reads as if it were an assignment for "Creative Writing" evening class.

[Evey Lansdale · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scott Heim's talent for writing shitty small-town backwater culture shines through in this book, a feature of his writing that excells to pull the reader into the setting. I read this book for the sole reason of absolutely adoring Mysterious Skin, and was pulled in thoroughly by this book (at first). Unfortunately the book is bogged down by the overwriting and the overt sexual assault that would very much disturb readers who have real-life trauma from such experiences. While in previous books Heim manages to be respectful in his depictions of these very such horrible acts, I was disappointed by In Awe because of how unnecessary (and borderline gratuitous) several of these scenes were. (Heavy spoilers ahead) For instance, 5th grade prepubescent girls being raped as punishment by their schoolteachers, a scene where a very young Boris gropes his sleeping stepfather, Boris shotgunning a vial of his crushes stolen piss at the dinner table in the name of "affection" ,another scene with Boris after the climax of the book engaging in necrophilia, among several more scenes like these. Needless to say they brought down the book tremendously and frankly disgusted me (who usually has a strong stomach). If you are in a good place and are capable of navigating your own tolerance to these types of scenes, then have at it. The writing and dialogue didn't hit as hard as Mysterious Skin. All of this not to say that there are some parts of the book that shine, they are clouded by the rest of it's flaws. Unfortunately for many who loved Mysterious Skin, if his other works were as much of a letdown as this one, it may have very well been Mr Heim's magnum opus. I will try to explore his other works just in case.

[Gabe]

This was the third Scott Heim book I’ve read and oh my god I’m sorry over it. All his books are essentially reskins of the same characters and tropes with a lot of sexual abuse and filth added in. In almost every Scott heim book you are gonna have: an older woman who’s a little crazy,children being molested,a drug addict,it’s gonna be set in Hutchison Kansas, there will be missing children, and one character will need to rediscover memories they blocked out .The way that he writes the molestation of children in this book is disgusting, this is a subject that should definitely be handled with a lot more grace than used in this novel. I didn’t finish the book so I don’t know how it ends but honestly that’s probably a good thing.If your looking to check out some of his books save yourself some time and skip all of his other books and just read mysterious skin, even still , if I had read mysterious skin first instead of last of all the Scott heim books I’ve read I would have definitely not enjoyed it as again I would be seeing the exact same tropes.

[Mojo Hill · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s not as good as Mysterious Skin, but it’s still pretty great. I’m “in awe” at how good of a writer Scott Heim is! It brings together three unique and different characters who I really grew to care about throughout the book. It maybe has too many flashbacks, and some of the plot points don’t always seem to serve a direct purpose.

Still, it’s dark and affecting, with a fantastic ending! Like Mysterious Skin, it takes place in a small Kansas town. Heim can take the most mundane thing and bring it to life with his effortlessly smooth and flowery descriptions. Gotta get Brady Corbet to direct the movie adaptation! And now I’ve gotta read Heim’s third book We Disappear!

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this novel before Mysterious Skin because there were no copies available in the library (I think the film had been shown on UK TV not long before and all copies of the book were impossible to get hold of). I thought the novel brilliant, eccentric, challenging and a great read. Coming to this novel and the writing of Mr. Heim fresh, with no preconceptions or expectations allowed me to like this book.

Many, many years have passed since my original judgement and, as soon as I can get hold of a copy, I intend to update my review.

[Sara Gerot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I mean yes the writing is a little fussy and over-the-top but I was personally into it. This an experience of a place that people at large look over, and don't appreciate. It was truly immersive into Kansas. Exploring that odd combination of town and rural that people don't understand. Also the characters are the sort who are often overlooked as well. Those are the best characters. This was a great book. Bleak, dark, and also touching.

[Kristen Mendez · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’m not gunna lie, I almost DNF’ed this one. It’s got a lot of great potential. The characters are easy to love and feel for. All of them share some personal, relatable, heart tugging thoughts and memories. The plot all together though was not complex. This book could have easily been 5 chapters and half the pages.

[Joey · Rating 4 out of 5]

A dark and lush tale about chosen family, loss, and obsession elegantly depicted against the backdrop of a perpetually stormy Kansas. I'll always be a sucker for stories about misfit weirdos in rural towns it seems. I've yet to read Mysterious Skin but I say In Awe deserves more love.

[Trevor]

jesus christ, scott

[Em · Rating 2 out of 5]

I....don't know what to say about this book. Whatever appreciation and complicated feelings I have for Mysterious Skin, I have the exact opposite for In Awe.

Scott Heim's writing is still, mostly, something that I like. I think he's a truly talented writer, and I generally like the way he strings words together. It's just this book. These characters, what happens (and what, apparently, never actually happened), it's all just so...gross. So unlikable and ugly. I don't like how it ends. I don't like anything that happens in it.

I also finally realized what the cover was. I don't know why it took me so long to recognize. Just why. Yuck, gross, that scene was a major okay, we're really doing that? moment.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wavered a lot with this book. For the first quarter of it I assumed I'd give it 5 stars, then it really started to drag towards the middle and I was set to give it 4, then it became so slow and tedious I was ready to give it 3, but then the closing pages salvaged a lot and I had to go with 4. This novel was both beautiful and frustrating. The prose is really impressive, nothing like 'Mysterious Skin'; the descriptions are so lush and all-encompassing that they can get overwhelming and hijack the story at times; they go on and on, describing every scent, sight and sound in absolutely beautiful prose, but without advancing the plot, and having the effect of slowing the story to a snail's pace. It feels like about 50 to 75 pages of this book could've been cut. I really struggled through much of the book as I was still wondering 3/4ths of the way through where the story was going. One thing is clear after reading this, though: Scott Heim can really write. He really flexes in this book in a way that he wasn't able to in 'Mysterious Skin', which was all written in first person narrative from the point of view of multiple narrators, each of whom wouldn't use the type of descriptive language he's able to use in 'In Awe' with the third person narration used through most of the book. I'm really excited to read his third novel 'We Disappear' because it was published over 10 years after 'Mysterious Skin' and 'In Awe'(which were both published only a year apart, respectively) and see his growth as a writer. Still not sure why more people don't read Scott Heim, but it's their loss. I suggest everyone break their Scott Heim-en (sorry, I've been holding that one in the chamber for a while now) on 'Mysterious Skin', which is fantastic. Also, watch the movie.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have to be honest. Someone I lived with bought this book when it first came out in hardback, and when they were finished reading it, I started reading it but I didn't finish it and for the life of me, I don't remember what the book was about. I was a big fan of "Mysterious Skin", and I remember being a little let down by this book. I don't remember why, which suggests that I should some day go back and give it another chance. I hope that fairly justifies the three star rating, heh?