Only English ^^

[NILON_WALLS]

You wrote "was" ... ^^

[Celinilein]

I was just correcting myself -> "I am" into "I was"

[NILON_WALLS]

Ah okaay my bad

[RisingShine66]

Suddenly, activity in this thread.

MfG Rewe

[Celinilein]

reviving succeeded

[NILON_WALLS]

Now get the 10.000th post here

[Celinilein]

10.000 maybe in 5 years...

[NILON_WALLS]

Haha :D .

[RisingShine66]

MfG Rewe

[NILON_WALLS]

"I was sleeping very well..."

[Celinilein]

no. just no.

[NILON_WALLS]

Okay sorry

[X_^_Ace100ace200_^_X]

Let me tell you something about my favourit book. "Candy" by Kevin Brooks

Candy, the character, has none. A heroin-addicted prostitute, utterly dependent on the terrifying pimp who supplies her drugs, she totters into toilets for regular fixes. She is beautiful, bright and sparky, but wrecked. Joe, the main character in the book, falls crazily in love with her, and love removes any control he might have had, hooking him into the ugly detritus of a drug-addict's world.

Mind you, Joe had little control over his life before, and he constantly feels propelled by circumstances. In classical tragedy, a weakness in the central character inexorably drives the cartwheel of doom. In Candy, things are driven partly by events, or by forces stronger than Joe or Candy. Unusually for teenage fiction, the main events are also driven by adults, making the powerlessness of the teenagers even more stark.

Joe does have a weakness - a habit of hyper-self-conscious dithering, very cleverly portrayed. He worries on the micro-level and lets the macro drive itself, knowing he can't control it. But those small things - boy, does he worry about them! Linking arms with Candy, what should he do with his other arm: "Should I stick my elbow out? Should I hold her arm? Should I put my hand in my pocket?" As a lesson in using small details to paint character, it's perfect.

It's a first-person narrative, which means that Joe's is the only character we truly come to know; the others are seen through his eyes, and therefore not completely. Thus Iggy, the pimp, becomes a creature without redeeming features. We can't know what Candy really feels, only how she seems to feel, though we like her almost as much as Joe does, because Joe does.

But Joe's character is worth spending time with. He is intriguingly different, and his introspection allows us unusually deep into his mind. I initially doubted if a 15-year-old boy would ruffle his 20-year-old sister's hair and refer to her as "a beautiful young woman who meant everything to me", but Joe's exceptional decency eventually persuaded me that he might. After all, Joe says that although his father is "bigoted and blind and stupid", he "couldn't hold that against him". I would have done, but Joe, being exceptionally decent, couldn't.

Brooks's use of language is adept. He is a wordsmith as well as a storyteller: Iggy has "passionless eyes", which have a "sterile light"; Joe's heightened senses after a particularly shocking scene are perfectly depicted by the quiet intensity of "the darkness shifting in the rustle of the shadows" and "the cold night air ... misted with the smells of the city". Exactly the right amount of controlled description floats a powerful plot to a more vivid, multisensory dimension.

As an anti-drug parable, it is unambiguous. Candy's awareness of her state is terrible to see, and the glimpses of her life with Iggy are some of the most shocking scenes imaginable. Good novelists, however, do not set out to write teaching materials and Brooks is undoubtedly a good novelist. Look at these characters, he says: enter their heads, live their lives for a few hours and ask yourself what you would have done. Are you stronger than love, passion, drugs, fear and brutality? You don't know whom you will fall for or what events will overtake you. How much control will you have then? Some words of warning: Candy may hook you too...

[Celinilein]

Wtf.... is anyone actually reading that wall of text? Sorry but I have enough book reviews to read and learn

[X_^_Ace100ace200_^_X]

Nah, it isn't much to read. It takes about five minutes... maybe five more to google for unknown words but that's it. ^^

And it's worth to read, trust me.

[Celinilein]

It is way too much to read and it would confuse me about the other books I have to remember. Can't risk that ^^

[xXDannyXx]

To much text

[Celinilein]

Told ya!!! :D

[xXDannyXx]

In your Face

[X_^_Ace100ace200_^_X]

It is way too much to read and it would confuse me about the other books I have to remember. Can't risk that ^^

That's a good reason. ^^

To much text

Too* much text.