Author: Sharon Creech
Publisher: Harper
Rating: WARTY!
This novel was well read by the narrator, but the story itself was really not interesting. It’s a prize-winning novel because it’s obsessed with death, quirks, endings, whack-a-loonery, sadness, eccentricity, disappointment, and weirdness. God forbid someone should ever write a bright, sunny novel about normal everyday people and win anything. No, if you want to be considered literary and deep, you had better-the-hell kill off some poor sumbitch, or no medals for you, make no mistake.
Oh, and it helps to write about native Americans, too, so this is why this story is about Salamanca Tree Hiddle, a girl who has just begun her teen age, and who is traveling with her grandparents across country to visit her mother, who happens to be dead (at least that's the idea I got. I never finished the novel, so I can't say for sure). The grandparents are complete whack-jobs, which is another major factor, I'm sure, in winning the medal. If they'd been normal, then abandon hope all ye who entertain heroic dreams of prizes.
Sal spends the trip telling her grandparents of her friend Phoebe, who is at least as whack as the grandparents are, which is undoubtedly why they're so interested in hearing it. While there were some funny moments here and there, Phoebe's story was completely lacking in so much as a scintilla of interest to me as was, for the most part, Sal's, hence my ditching this waste of time in order to move onto something which would better contribute to the lifespan of my brain cells than this medal-winning novel ever promised to do.
You know, it occurs to me that if the author had simply published Phoebe's story in the third person, no one would have cared, so she felt forced to tart it up and surround it with a totally whack frame in order to get some traction. I think I'm going to do the same thing with all my novels and win me sum o' them thar medals! Yihaw!
