Journal on the second quarter of the book
The second half of the book is rather boring. Despite the book going through a serious plot and conflict change, the book is uneventful and uninteresting. Christopher finds out his mother is still alive, and the story is taking a major turn and switches from the death of a dog to finding his thought-to-be-dead mother, and why his father was hiding his mother from him. We also get a glimpse of the relationship between Christopher and his father tensing. The problem with this quarter is that it seems uneventful, with distractions of Christopher's humor.
In this section we see foreshadowing of the information Christopher gets on his mother being alive. Mrs. Alexander tells Christopher earlier in the book that his mother isn’t really dead. In this section Christopher finds out his mother left his father to live with Mr. Shears (the ex-husband of the neighbor).
Chris and his father’s relationship takes a dark turn when the father finds Christopher's book full of evidence, after him repeatedly telling Chris to not get involved. This results in Chris and his father physically hurting each other. Yikes.
The humor in the book is great, but continues to take away from the conflict and the storyline. This leaves the reader unsure of how to respond, like the first quarter of the book. Despite all the excitement and mystery, the book is uneventful. The humor has a huge role in that.
The book is bay far a unique read, but is not really a great book. It’s good for laughs, but the storyline is weak, and on top of that too much distraction from the main storyline. The conflict also seems to change halfway through the book. I don’t know what that’s about. It needs to start focusing on the storyline more, rather than Christopher’s strange thoughts. Though, that IS how someone with autism would see the situation. So maybe it’s just not good to read the mind of an autistic boy. Not sure yet.
"The second half of the book is rather boring."
ReplyDeleteYep. I was really questioning if this book was worth the read at this point. Having finished it, however, I give it a solid 3.5/5.
I partially agree with your comment on the storyline being weak. It was predictable at a certain point, yes, and could of been more original and "tighter", though I still think Haddon does a good job balancing the more serious parts with the Christopher's humorous thinking.
I see completely where you're going with the storyline being weak and there's a lot of distractions. However, you must understand that if we took away all those distractions, we'd get a little kids book. Not a little kids book with a deep and complex adult meaning behind it similar to Adventure Time, but just a story of a dog dying and a kid figuring out the mystery. Chris' distractions is what gives the story life.
ReplyDeleteI did not find this part of the book necessarily "boring”. While the beginning of part two was quite uninteresting what was lost there was made up for when we learn that Christopher mother is still alive, major plot twist! I do agree that the story line is predictable though.
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