Hello Friends,

While this is not our “Library and Banned Books News” week, (that’s next week), I do want to mention that the Knox County, TN schools reversed the banning of Alex Haley’s Roots. And that was because of community and national blow back. Fighting back matters! Good job, book ‘freadom’ fighters!

I had another cataract surgery last week, and wasn’t seeing clearly again, so I had the chance to listen to several audiobooks. One of them was Daniel Kraus’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel Angel Down. I read some remarks about the book questioning whether the Pulitzer committee was biased toward experimental work. Apparently, some critics found all the finalists to be similar in their approach. I don’t know—I haven’t read most of the books up for the award. However, Angel Down is unusual (I wouldn’t go so far as to say experimental) in that it is a single sentence. But, at least in audiobook form, it flows well. Pauses can be felt; there are chapter breaks (each starts with the word “and”).

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Angel Down

Angel is easy to follow and reminded me—in form, not in content— of the Academy Award winning film 1917 (Directed by Sam Mendes) which feels like it was filmed in one continuous shot. I haven’t read any interviews with Kraus, so I don’t know whether he was influenced by the film.

Angel is the story of a group of five American soldiers trying to stay alive during the Meuse-Argonne offensive of World War I. A weird lamentation is coming from the No Man’s Land between them and the Germans. The pitch and endlessness of the cry is driving the men mad. Their commanding officer—Major General Reis, a very bad guy—commands them to take care of the man, who is probably caught in barbed wire. He means they are to kill the sufferer.

No one wants to risk their life in No Man’s Land. Private Cyril Bagger, a con man and draft dodger who only landed in the war because he was caught in an illegal scheme, knows he can con his way out of being chosen for the risky mission. However, when the task falls to a teenage soldier named Arno, a mere boy who lied about his age in order to join the army, Bagger decides to accompany him. He has a soft spot for the poor kid after reading “The Son of Tarzan” to him. For a while, he believes he can make sure that Arno makes it home alive.

When the two venture out to find the suffering soldier, they are surprised to find instead what they think is an angel, a woman who is unable to walk but who emanates a beam of heavenly light. It seems she protects them as they rescue her. But once they arrive back with the others, the angel brings out both the worst impulses of each of them as well as their illusory dreams. Bagger and Arno make it their mission to protect the angel and deliver her to safety.

The story is full of vivid descriptions of the gore and horror of war—severed limbs, erupting guts, rotting teeth, pus and infections, burnt flesh—one atop the other, giving the reader a sense of the futility and darkness of the enterprise.

As a high school teacher librarian, I read many YA books that I would later ‘book talk’ to students. The way the horror and gore were described in Angel were familiar to me. Is this the Daniel Kraus who wrote YA novels that I used to book talk? I checked—and yes, he is the same man.

This Pulitzer winning novel has much in common with two novels I read for book talks—Rotters and Scowler. Perhaps this will lead some readers to think ‘how did Angel win the Pulitzer, then?’ But maybe another way to look at it is that some YA books are very good, and Kraus’s are among them. Maybe he was building the skills that landed that Pulitzer.

If you enjoy horror, you might enjoy those novels. You could recommend them to teens you know. Teens could impress their teachers with the fact that they’ve read books by Kraus. Here are some thoughts I had when I read the YA books.

Scowler

My thoughts in October 2013:

Scowler is a great October read, one in a YA branch of the true horror family. So—this is NOT your love triangle with some supernatural creatures thrown in ala Twilight and its progeny.

Scowler is Dark.

Scowler is Disturbing.

After nine years in prison, a psychopath returns to the family farm with one thing on his mind—revenge against his son, now nineteen years old, for having him locked up all those years ago. That father, Marvin Burke, has escaped when meteorites fall throughout the county. One hits the prison and chaos ensues. Though Burke is supposed to be in a more distant lock-up, another escaped prisoner comes to the farm and warns Ry that his father is out for his blood.

Ry had bested his father nine years earlier after climbing through a window and discovering his mother locked in her room, unable to flee. Her immobility is due to the twisted torture that her husband had devised for her in response to the fact that she has secretly done work to support the failing farm. (I can’t tell you—don’t want to kill the creep factor when you read it.)

Though the family—Ry, his mom and his little sister Sarah—nearly escape, Marvin Burke catches them. It is up to ten-year-old Ry to be a decoy, to risk himself through a freezing night. He has no jacket, none of the right clothing, in fact. No light. No nothing, except three toys that fall from his pockets. As his mental state breaks under pressure of his father stalking him in order to murder him, these toys come to life and direct him through his living hell.

One of Ry’s toys—Scowler—is an old cast-off, homemade from pipes, husks and shells. Hideously ugly.

It may prove his salvation more than once.

High school housekeeping: I think any teen might enjoy Scowler for a Halloween fright. Though there are several flashbacks, it takes place over a few days, just before the meteorite hits and then just after. Here, the reader finds himself in the mind of a sadistic psychopath as well as in the mind of his son, who, having suffered beyond ordinary human endurance, may well become a psychopath himself. The language is colorful, so if cursing offends you, you might take a pass. But this gives a sense of reality both to the brother-sister relationship and to the dire situation of the family. It’s a book of average length and average difficulty that will give you a taste of what adult horror fans read in the lengthier works of Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and their ilk.

Rotters

My thoughts in June 2013:

Such a weird story! The combination of bullying and horror story compelled me to finish the book, and I think it will appeal to anyone who likes really quirky stuff.

Joey Crouch has lived with his mother all of his life in Chicago. They don’t go out much and he’s never been over the Illinois state line. But when his mother is hit by a bus and killed, Joey is removed to a small town in Iowa to live with a father he’s never known.

Things are very bad from the start. Ken Harnett, Joey’s dad, doesn’t bother to pick him up at the depot. He immediately leaves the house upon Joey’s arrival and doesn’t return for three days. Meanwhile, Joey sleeps on the floor, has nothing to eat and notices a strange, nasty odor in the shack that he can’t identify.

Dressed poorly, hungry and stinking, Joey immediately becomes a target of bullying in his new high school—not only by jocks but by a sadistic biology teacher as well, one who daily makes Joey stand in front of the class and then uses him to point out body parts and their functions. (Just a note here from the teacher in me: I had a hard time believing that any teacher anywhere could get away with treating a student the way Joey was treated—but if one tried, I would hope that someone in the class would speak up and tell outsiders.)

The situation only gets worse when we discover what that terrific stink is: Ken is a modern-day grave robber. With nothing to lose at school, Joey decides to learn the trade, and we enter the bizarre brotherhood of this underworld. They are criminals with a strange code of honor, and the one of them who has broken the code is terrorizing all the others. He may have the power to use Joey to get at the whole group.

Rotters are people—because all people will die, and then they will rot if they are not cremated. The descriptions of grave robbing, of disintegrating corpses, are the stuff of nightmares. (So beware.) Yet the story is oddly original and well-written. There are a lot of interesting facts about the history of grave robbing and the ‘resurrection men’ who dug up corpses for scientists and professors to use in study. (Remember Jerry Cruncher in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities?) When Joey has been bullied beyond endurance and he seeks revenge—well, imagine what a grave robber could do.

Reading

15 Essential Works of American Literature from Publishers Weekly

The most vital books published in the U.S. since 1776 as voted on by critics.

Of these 15 books, I’ve read 13. Which of them have you read?

AI and Writing Awards