My Chris Crutcher novel was called Stotan!. I can’t say that I loved this novel but it wasn’t bad. There were parts of the novel that made me really angry, and I thought they were stupid. There were ideas presented in the novel that didn’t make sense at all. I don’t think he’s experienced a lot of problems he had in this novel.
One of the problems he had in this novel was child abuse. One of the characters, Nortie Wheeler, was abused frequently by his Father. Nortie was often talking about how upset he was, with his Father, yet he wanted to please him so badly. I don’t think he should have been so up close and personal on how Nortie felt, if he himself didn’t know how abused children feel. That’s a feeling, I don’t believe, that shouldn’t be taken lightly. Yet it was thrown around in the book quite a bit, with feelings, I don’t necessarily think are true.
I also think he put in way to many problems. At some points it seemed like an over load. Between deaths, girlfriends, drugs, and abuse, it became fairly unrealistic. That may have been what he was going for, but it was very confusing. I don’t believe that in one year a group of five teenagers could run into that much drama. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible, especially because at least 3/4 of their problems were pure fate.
I have to say though, that at some points in this book it did deal with real life issues of teenagers. He was right there, and on the dot, with the relationship issues they all ran into. Although I’m pretty sure any level headed teenage girl, wouldn’t date a student teacher. I thought that was pretty messed up. It was also very weird, because throughout the book he’s talking about how intelligent she is, and how she doesn’t date many people, and isn’t nice to very many guys.
I thought it was really sad how Walker’s brother was so messed up, and that his parents didn’t want anything to do with him. I’ve seen families like that, where they shut out people because they make a few mistakes, I think it’s very sad. I know that you can’t allow people to ruin your life with their problems, but I think it would have been good to at least get him into rehabilitation.
All in all this wasn’t a bad book, I just felt as if it was a drama overload. It also was mostly unrealistic when taken all together, but each event within itself was very realistic. I wouldn’t read it again, but I didn’t absolutely hate it. I just think he should have had at least a few more good things happen, because it was a very sad book. But like I said, all in all it wasn’t horrible.
