Warning SPOILERS!!!
This book is a bit of a puzzle.
I don't feel I can really discuss it without giving away some of the
plot, so I am not going to even try. The story is told from the point
of view of Logan, whose best friend Zyler lived with a father who would
physically abuse him. From the beginning, Zyler had told Logan not to
tell anyone when Zyler suffered some injury at the hands of his father.
And the injuries weren't minor - black eyes, broken arm, cuts requiring
stitches, etc. Then, at one point, Logan witnesses an assault on not
just Zyler, but also on Cami, a girl who was with Zyler, when Zyler's
father was ostensibly gone. The father returned unexpectedly and
assaulted not just Zyler, but also the girl - ripping her clothes. If
there was a sexual assault, and it seems likely that that is what
occurred, Logan (and the reader) didn't see that explicitly, but he did
hear what was going on. Zyler then attacked his father and thought he
might have killed him. Logan listened in horror - and fled. After
escaping the scene, he not only did nothing, but he also refused to open
his window to help Zyler and Cami when Zyler tried to get some help.
The
book is really about the aftermath of the attack, but the story is not
told in sequence, rather it jumps around in time from early days of
their friendship, to Logan's life after Zyler has moved away, to events
unfolding just before the attack. Basically, Logan has to learn to live
with the guilt of doing nothing, of having actively refused to do
anything. He does this by actively refusing to do anything to combat
the abuse he is also suffering at the hands of the kids in his Boy Scout
troup. Occasionally, he gets to a point where he can't stand it any
more and he fights back, but this seems to only make matters worse,
reinforcing his tendency to do nothing instead of act. A budding
friendship with another girl, Laurel, and a part in a play seem to
gradually bring him to the point where he can take some action, but it
is an excruciating journey and, even at the end of the book, when he has
finally stood up to the Boy Scout troup leader, the reader is left with
the question of whether Logan really is going to be OK. The author
attempts to show his positive progress with the Boy Scout leader
incident and with Logan's willingness to email Zyler, but it still isn't
clear that he is on the road to recovery - or what shape his recovery
will take.
The story works for me, in spite of the
tenuous conclusion, except for one hole in the story. At one point, one
of Zyler's teachers says she has had enough (she has seen Zyler with
too many "accidental" injuries) and she decides to take action. But,
rather than reporting the abuse to the proper authorities, she confronts
the father himself - and that is the end of it. As a teacher, I just
can't see this happening. In ALL of the school districts I have worked
in (and that is quite a few, since I have moved around a bit), teachers
are reminded of the LAW that they have to report suspected child abuse.
They don't confront the perpetrator, they REPORT it. It would have
worked better for me if the author had written that the teacher reported
the abuse, but the father stopped abusing for a while, until the case
went cold. The case worker moved on to more active cases. Then the
abuse started again.
An unsettling book. I am not sure who the audience for it is.
No comments:
Post a Comment