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Library | Call Number | Status |
|---|---|---|
Searching... Monmouth Public Library | YA Fic Rapp, A. 2003 | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
A harrowing new novel by Adam Rapp brings us to the depths of humanity - and powerfully dramatizes the resilience of the human spirit. On the run in a stolen car with a kidnapped baby in tow, Custis, Curl, and Boobie are three young people with deeply troubled pasts and bleak futures. As they struggle to find a new life for themselves, it becomes painfully clear that none will ever be able to leave the past behind. Yet for one, redemption is waiting in the unlikeliest of places. With the raw language of the street and lyrical, stream-of-consciousness prose, Adam Rapp hurtles the reader into a world of lost children, a world that is not for the faint of heart. Gripping, disturbing, and starkly illuminating, his hypnotic narration captures the voices of two damaged souls - a third speaks only through drawings - to tell a story of alienation, deprivation, and ultimately, the saving power of compassion.
Author Notes
Adam Rapp is the acclaimed author of several novels for young adults. In addition, he is an accomplished playwright whose plays have been produced by the New York Theatre Workshop, the Bush Theatre in London, and the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
"On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap," begins Rapp's (Little Chicago) dark tale about three runaways who understand hatred and violence better than love. Custis, an orphan, is fleeing from his "owner," a producer of pornography and snuff films. Custis is accompanied by Curl, a child prostitute, and her boyfriend, Boobie, who has just murdered his parents and kidnapped his baby brother to sell on the streets. Drawn together more by desperation than friendship, they roam from one town to the next, stealing and scavenging. Alternating first-person narratives graphically express Custis's and Curl's histories of abuse and exploitation. Boobie remains more of a mystery, revealing troubled thoughts through pictures rather than words (Ering's line illustrations are meant to recreate Boobie's sketches). Signs of hope do not appear until two of the three children have lost their lives and the lone survivor, touched by a stranger's kindness, faces options that could change his fate. Readers may have trouble stomaching the language (e.g., "He was a dirty-ass little half-nigger, too-a lot dirtier than me"), as well as the horrors so flatly depicted and, in the end, so handily overcome. Final artwork not seen by PW. Ages 15-up. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
[cf2]Sordid[cf1] doesn't begin to describe this novel of four runaway outcasts. There's charismatic (and pyromaniacal) Boobie, who has taken his baby brother to sell. Along for the ride are young prostitute and addict Curl and throwaway boy Custis. Custis's narration of their rural travels is a stream of obscenity, but his vulnerability is also in evidence. The novel's happy ending (for Custis, anyway) isn't exactly earned, but it certainly is welcome. From HORN BOOK Spring 2004, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* This isn't an easy book to read the characters are often cruel, their language is full of violence and hatred, and their circumstances are bleak but out of that bleakness, Rapp manages to draw something bittersweet, startling, and even beautiful. The bulk of the narrative comes from Custis, a broken, angry teen hardened after years of horrifying sexual abuse at the hands of his owner, Bob Motley. After overhearing Bob plan to feature him in a snuff film, Custis bolts, eventually joining Boobie, a near-mute, pyromaniac teen who murdered his family, and Curl, a teenage prostitute with a bad drug habit. When we meet the trio, they're on the road, scrounging up money however they can, steering clear of the cops pursuing Boobie, and taking care of Boobie's baby brother, who they're planning to sell. Not surprisingly, their plan is a failure, and the only saving grace is Seldom, a black man living alone in the woods, who takes in Custis and the baby and treats them with genuine warmth. In language dense with unusual, artfully earthy metaphor, Rapp draws impressive depth from Custis' first-person narrative, which at first is full of ugly slurs and aggressive boasting but gradually comes to contain visceral, matter-of-fact descriptions of feeling I just nodded and tried to go, She was like my sister,' but it didn't really come out cuz it was all stuck in my throat like a hunk of meat. Although there's ultimately a warm ray of hope here, Rapp doesn't offer meaningful lessons or seamless redemption; rather, he brings the soft corners of a hard life into focus, and, utterly devoid of sentimentality, he demonstrates the power of lifesaving, unconditional love. Undeniably brutal, but nevertheless stunning, stirring stuff.--Hunter, Sarah Copyright 2017 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 9 Up-The opening sentence sets the hook: "On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap." He is the eldest of a quartet of kids on the run. The "everything else" consists of the fact that he has killed his parents, stolen their car, and hooked up with Curl, 15, a prostitute. They take in the younger Custis, who has recently escaped from sexual bondage with an abusive pedophile. Lastly, the youngest traveler, Boobie's infant brother, is regarded as a likely source of income-if they can find a buyer. Depraved and depressing? Oh yeah, and the shocks just keep on coming. The fearsome elements escape the pages like nightmares loosed into daylight. Custis carries a loaded gun and is a racist who frequently uses offensive epithets. Curl, a drug addict, is pragmatic about using her body to make money. Boobie is not much of a talker, and is a pyromaniac whose occasional, naive, and brutal drawings speak for him. Things get worse before they get better. Seldom, an elderly black man, helps Custis bury the dead, celebrate Christmas, and take his first tentative steps toward a "normal" child/adult relationship. Spare descriptions and stellar characterization reel readers into the dark and violent world of these dispossessed and abused young people. This book will be controversial, but for those readers who are ready to be challenged by a serious work of shockingly realistic fiction, it invites both an emotional and intellectual response, and begs to be discussed.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
The bleak scenery of winter forms the backdrop to this tale of three runaways, bonded together to grasp feebly for emotional warmth. The reader meets Custis, Curl, and Boobie as they speed down the back roads of Illinois in a stolen car, with a stolen baby. Alternating narratives move back and forth through time, obliquely telling the characters' individual stories even as their current drama unfolds. Custis is homeless, a fugitive from a child-porn producer; Curl is a drug-addicted prostitute; Boobie is a virtual cipher--his contributions to the narrative consist of increasingly violent and nihilistic sketches--who, the reader learns, has just killed his well-to-do parents and made off with his baby brother. They have no destination other than to get away from where they've been; they have a vague plan of selling the baby and using the money to set themselves up comfortably. Their "plan" is doomed from the start: the three, plus the baby, end up in an abandoned van in the middle of the woods, where first Curl dies and then Boobie vanishes into the snow. It is at this moment that Custis and the baby are taken in by Seldom, an ancient and eccentric black man who lives in a cabin and who begins to show Custis that maybe there is another way to live. With his customary ear for the language of the marginalized teen, Rapp (Little Chicago, 2002, etc.) allows his characters to present themselves with total un-self-consciousness, frankly and powerfully laying out the squalor of their existence without any seeming sense that life can be anything else but squalid. Seldom may himself seem rather like deus ex machina from a plotting perspective, but he serves to save both Custis and the narrative from utter annihilation. The snug warmth of Seldom's home and the little family he and Custis and the baby have formed contrasts powerfully with the frigid internal winter that Custis has survived, allowing both Custis and the reader to hope for redemption. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Custis, Curl, and Boobie have bad pasts and worse futures. Now they are on the run, hoping to sell Boobie's baby brother to fund a way out of their desperate circumstances. Cold Weather Appeal: Most of the action takes place in a frozen landscape. Only one of these three lost souls finds some redemption. An elderly black man named Seldom offers Custis kindness without cost and a warm home for Christmas. Why It Is for Us: From the first line-"On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap"-the reader knows that the world is a very ugly place for these children. The youngest, Custis, has escaped an abusive pedophile, Boobie killed his parents, and Curl is a 15-year-old, drug-addicted prostitute. Rapp's spare text and multiple points of view (Boobie speaking only through drawings) elevate what could have been a preachy sob story to a literary achievement.-Angelina Benedetti (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| The Skylark | p. 1 |
| The Otel Motel | p. 59 |
| The Van | p. 87 |
| Seldom | p. 123 |
| The Itty Bitty Farm | p. 129 |