One of my students recommended this book to me – he enjoyed reading it as a way to study English, so I thought I’d check it out.
The theme of this book is survival and independence, sort of like a Jack London book of trying to get along with nature, although the main character of this story is a young teenager (named Brian).
For the reasons above I enjoyed the book, although it was clearly written with an agenda – don’t take the food, conveniences and simple luxuries all around you for granted- with a dash of “if you got up off your ass and went out into nature for a while you might learn something”.
The writing is simple and it seems like it was written with younger people in mind. We are constantly peeking into the main character’s head and telling us about his ideas – how about more showing instead? Also there is a weird backstory about a secret that he knows about his mother, who is in the process of getting a divorce from his father. Not sure why this was important other than adding to the pressure on this kid.
The ending comes abruptly, and at first I thought it came too quickly, but the more I thought about it the more I liked how it wrapped up.
Next I am reading James by Percival Everett.
