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Dead Boy
An average Tuesday morning. Sitting in his usual seat at the back of the classroom, an average 11-year-old, Cody Roy, hears firecrackers down the hallway. But they're not firecrackers--an active shooter is stalking the school hallways.
Cody and a girl his age from another classroom make their escape out a window. Panicked, they run from the school, charging headlong through the adjacent cornfields to Cody's secret hideout—the Far Away Place--a hidden oasis in the middle of the vast surrounding farmland. They hunker down there, pretending the terrible Tuesday never happened, pretending they're just two kids playing hooky on a lazy spring day in an idyll paradise.
Until reality creeps back in.
While it's growing dark, the pair make their way homeward. It's in the immediate aftermath of tragedy that Cody discovers life as he knew it has altered forever; the school shooter was no random stranger. The one saving grace for Cody is that the girl whose name he doesn't even know is now a part of his life.
The girl's name is Astrid. She's not average. And she has her own story to tell.
An ultimately uplifting adult novel in the child-narrator tradition of ROOM by Emma Donoghue, THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold and A HOUSE OF LIGHT AND STONE by E.J. Runyon
Cody and a girl his age from another classroom make their escape out a window. Panicked, they run from the school, charging headlong through the adjacent cornfields to Cody's secret hideout—the Far Away Place--a hidden oasis in the middle of the vast surrounding farmland. They hunker down there, pretending the terrible Tuesday never happened, pretending they're just two kids playing hooky on a lazy spring day in an idyll paradise.
Until reality creeps back in.
While it's growing dark, the pair make their way homeward. It's in the immediate aftermath of tragedy that Cody discovers life as he knew it has altered forever; the school shooter was no random stranger. The one saving grace for Cody is that the girl whose name he doesn't even know is now a part of his life.
The girl's name is Astrid. She's not average. And she has her own story to tell.
An ultimately uplifting adult novel in the child-narrator tradition of ROOM by Emma Donoghue, THE LOVELY BONES by Alice Sebold and A HOUSE OF LIGHT AND STONE by E.J. Runyon
244 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 19, 2020
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
September 24, 2023
[I was given a free copy of this book by the author in exchange for a review through Voracious Readers Only]
WOW. Just...wow. I'm still reeling and puzzling over the ending. I didn't know what to expect from this book and I definitely didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It's difficult to write about a school shooting, even moreso to write about one from a child's perspective, but Wells did it excellently here. The writing is incredibly poetic and descriptive yet raw, sparing no details during the scenes of graphic violence but still manages to be beautiful as the story just gets increasingly heartbreaking, though it has an uplifting ending (or not, depending on your interpretation). I loved the use of motifs in this story and the treatment of the themes of before vs after a tragedy, the past vs the present, and the innocence of childhood vs the frightening and brutal adult world. I enjoyed this harrowing yet beautiful novel and I think fans of Boy's Life, It, and Room will also.
WOW. Just...wow. I'm still reeling and puzzling over the ending. I didn't know what to expect from this book and I definitely didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. It's difficult to write about a school shooting, even moreso to write about one from a child's perspective, but Wells did it excellently here. The writing is incredibly poetic and descriptive yet raw, sparing no details during the scenes of graphic violence but still manages to be beautiful as the story just gets increasingly heartbreaking, though it has an uplifting ending (or not, depending on your interpretation). I loved the use of motifs in this story and the treatment of the themes of before vs after a tragedy, the past vs the present, and the innocence of childhood vs the frightening and brutal adult world. I enjoyed this harrowing yet beautiful novel and I think fans of Boy's Life, It, and Room will also.
Displaying 1 of 1 review