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A review by starkiwi
Boy's Life by Robert R. McCammon
1.0
This review is just going to be one big, long rant about why I absolutely loathe this book. Moral of the story: it sucks. Big Time. So now you don’t have to read all of this. You could, because I really can’t stop you. It will, however give you a reason about my pure hatred toward this book.
Sorry for any typos this rant may contain. I will end up typing pretty fast when I get passionate about this rant. First off I cannot describe to you how happy I am to have finished this book. Finally, after what seems like many many months this book has now come to an end. You don’t know true freedom or joy until you have suffered through that whole book and are finally done. But then, the realization dawned on me that I am reading this book for school. And I will have to end up writing an essay on it. So I love the suffering is not over. There are so many things I disliked while reading this book. You can tell by how long it took for me to read it. Almost 2 months. Most of the time I can read a book about that size in 3 to 4 days. Sometimes two weeks at the most. The fact that this book took me almost two whole months is ridiculous. It just went so slow for me. And that’s because, it was incredibly boring. When I had first read the summary of this book, I thought it was a great book to have to read for school. Normally none of the books you read for school sound this exciting. A small town where everybody knows everybody, yet there was a murder, and someone has to be the murder. It sounded like one of the most awesome detective stories I’ve heard of. The reviews didn’t shake me too much, there are always people who like the book, and people who dislike it. I thought, since it was a murder mystery but I would totally love it. That all died for me in the first three chapters. It crashed and burned a mushroom cloud of meaningless words and disappointment. I still keep the book a chance, mostly because I had to. But it failed and ruined it’s chance. It starts out really good, and you get to see the murder really quickly. There wasn’t a whole chapter of characterization. Which I find some older books have, and I really don’t like. It takes away from time we could be reading the story. This book, after detailed the murder, basically forgot to bring it up again. I know it is from the little boy‘s perspective. But if you say this book is about a murder in a small town, then you need to bring up the murder. You cannot just wait 10 chapters and say oh yeah we’re still troubled about this because we don’t know who killed him. It also spent an unreasonably long time on things that are not necessary to the main plot of the story. It’s almost like the main plug is a sign quad, but there is no other main plot. One chapter was spent directly on wasps invading our church. A whole chapter. Spent on wasps. That, to me, felt it had nothing to do with the story. I know you can’t really tell, but writing this is getting me very worked up. Just the mere memory rings all that hatred back. There were other times where unreasonably long amounts of pages were spent on stuff that didn’t really seem to matter. There also was a wad of thought interjections. I already know that my essay has to be about how the main character, Cory, grows up. But, with all these Interjections it is hard to tell whether these ideas and thoughts are from the older him writing the story, or the younger him living the story. There’s no real good way to sort through them they just all come at you. This is the first time of many, many, many, very confusing things in this book. How my supposed to find evidence for my essay if some of the interjections that I end up using our from his adult self. Because they are not the things that I’m trying to look for. Mostly I was looking for when young Cory had thoughts very similar to an adults. But those adult thoughts cannot come from adult Cory. Because then they really would be adult thoughts, and that from a kid. Even just trying to explain it is very confusing. Speaking of confusing, Cory owns a bike. Don’t even get me started on his bike. This bike, that Cory owns, Most confusing thing in this entire book. Let’s start off with magic. This book talks a lot about magic. I’m not with witches and wizards like Harry Potter. Magic just happening in every day life. Actual magic I mean. Like boys growing wings and flying away. A bike smashing into a car with no rider on it. Bullets turning into garden snakes all of a sudden. All these things made no sense whatsoever in any world. I get that sometimes young Cory can be imagining the stuff, but it still seems to have an effect on everyone else in the towel. And that’s when it really starts to make no sense. OK. Back to the bike. This bike has an eye. Literally. The book talks about the bike having an eye. And the bike moving on it’s own. Bikes can’t do that. BIKES ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS. They cannot talk, or move, or see, or do, without something else helping them. For this example, a person. It becomes really hard to tell what is actually happening, what Cory is just imagining or making up for the sake of the story. I really don’t like this book. Two people who have read this far, these are my reasons. There will be more, but do you have permission to stop whenever you deem necessary. Thank you for letting me rant to you. I like someone to listen. Now, back to the nonexistent mystery. One thing this book does not do, among many other things, is let you try and solve the mystery. One of my favorite things about mysteries is trying to solve it before the main character can. I like to piece together the clues with what I know about the characters and figure out which one is guilty. In this book they don’t really give you many characteristics of other people. Until the very end, where they actually tried to solve the mystery. You get some characteristics, but not enough to know who would convict a murder. They also only bring up please, when they feel the murder needs to be brought back up. Which is not very often. At least, not often enough for the readers to actually try and find out who may be guilty. You really never know who may be guilty until the very, very end. They also don’t give you many suspects. Yes, you have everyone in the town. , as I said before, there are not enough characteristics about everyone for them all to be suspects. By the third part of the book you really only have two people who could be murderers. And they don’t even seem like murderers. So you only have two choices, and that’s it, no more. No less. then, a few chapters later, of course, narrows it down to one. And then many chapters later, you figure out that one is the one. And you still have to wait for all these in between chapters to be read as well. I really really really really really don’t like this book. I am classifying it as the worst book I’ve ever read. Not to mention, the teeny-weeny clues that we get make no sense at all. There are some really random clues in there. Some of them don’t even fit together at the end. So the murderer could still be someone else, but it’s not. They tried to connect the clues, and it just doesn’t make too much sense. Like most things in this book. There is too much time spent away from the murder for that to be the summary of the book. The real summary of this book is this boy lives in a small town, with a murder recently having happened. His father is very disturbed by this murder. His mother is very disturbed by his father being disturbed. And the boy is just having a really really messed up life right now. Also his life contains strange and unexpected events that most of the time make no sense. And there you have it, the truth summary of the book boys life by Robert Mccammon. It sounds like a lovely book right. I bet you just can’t wait to go read it. I cannot wait until this school year is over. That. I. Can. Burn. This. Book. And throw a big book burning party. Don’t worry, I’m not a Nazi. I just really hate this book. And I know quite a few other people hate this book too. We could have a hate boys life party. This whole book sucks. None of the events that happened in between the talking about the murderer or actually interesting. They are all just filler to make the book a bit longer. Mostly, I’m ranting because the murder wasn’t the focal point of the story. But, this story had no other potential focal point. It had no plot or whatsoever. Unless, you can call a boy living his strange and terrible life a plot. But I don’t think that’s a real book plot. There has to be some arc to it. Living their life is not an arc readers want to read. Unless their life is amazing. Which his was not. That’s just a person going about their life. And I can’t see why our teacher would have us read this book. There doesn’t seem to be any great takeaways from the book. Most books have a good message to them. Saying like, something about your life and how to live life the best you can live it. This book, had none. It seemed to just be a meaningless jumble of words about this boy is terrible life. There was no true take away. At least, not one that I found. Trust me, I looked. When I get to school, I am having a talk with my English teacher, about why she made us read this book. If she or he says that it was because the district requires it and that they are sorry that I had to put up with this book. That will qualify as an answer. If not, I want to know why in the world the teacher would like this book. It probably is required by the district. But I still want to know if my English teacher would share the same views on this book as I do. I hope so. I have read some reviews that gave this book 5 stars. They said the book was engaging. I would like to ask them how so? Others say the book had a real message to it. I say what message? They are not very specific when they review the book. I am hoping to be much more specific with my review. I would greatly and specifically tell everyone what I hated about this book. So now that I am done with my rant, please know that this book was a complete waste of my time. And the only reason I stayed sane during reading this was because I read something else along with it. I would not recommend you read this book unless you absolutely have to. I am so happy to have finally finished this book.
Sorry for any typos this rant may contain. I will end up typing pretty fast when I get passionate about this rant. First off I cannot describe to you how happy I am to have finished this book. Finally, after what seems like many many months this book has now come to an end. You don’t know true freedom or joy until you have suffered through that whole book and are finally done. But then, the realization dawned on me that I am reading this book for school. And I will have to end up writing an essay on it. So I love the suffering is not over. There are so many things I disliked while reading this book. You can tell by how long it took for me to read it. Almost 2 months. Most of the time I can read a book about that size in 3 to 4 days. Sometimes two weeks at the most. The fact that this book took me almost two whole months is ridiculous. It just went so slow for me. And that’s because, it was incredibly boring. When I had first read the summary of this book, I thought it was a great book to have to read for school. Normally none of the books you read for school sound this exciting. A small town where everybody knows everybody, yet there was a murder, and someone has to be the murder. It sounded like one of the most awesome detective stories I’ve heard of. The reviews didn’t shake me too much, there are always people who like the book, and people who dislike it. I thought, since it was a murder mystery but I would totally love it. That all died for me in the first three chapters. It crashed and burned a mushroom cloud of meaningless words and disappointment. I still keep the book a chance, mostly because I had to. But it failed and ruined it’s chance. It starts out really good, and you get to see the murder really quickly. There wasn’t a whole chapter of characterization. Which I find some older books have, and I really don’t like. It takes away from time we could be reading the story. This book, after detailed the murder, basically forgot to bring it up again. I know it is from the little boy‘s perspective. But if you say this book is about a murder in a small town, then you need to bring up the murder. You cannot just wait 10 chapters and say oh yeah we’re still troubled about this because we don’t know who killed him. It also spent an unreasonably long time on things that are not necessary to the main plot of the story. It’s almost like the main plug is a sign quad, but there is no other main plot. One chapter was spent directly on wasps invading our church. A whole chapter. Spent on wasps. That, to me, felt it had nothing to do with the story. I know you can’t really tell, but writing this is getting me very worked up. Just the mere memory rings all that hatred back. There were other times where unreasonably long amounts of pages were spent on stuff that didn’t really seem to matter. There also was a wad of thought interjections. I already know that my essay has to be about how the main character, Cory, grows up. But, with all these Interjections it is hard to tell whether these ideas and thoughts are from the older him writing the story, or the younger him living the story. There’s no real good way to sort through them they just all come at you. This is the first time of many, many, many, very confusing things in this book. How my supposed to find evidence for my essay if some of the interjections that I end up using our from his adult self. Because they are not the things that I’m trying to look for. Mostly I was looking for when young Cory had thoughts very similar to an adults. But those adult thoughts cannot come from adult Cory. Because then they really would be adult thoughts, and that from a kid. Even just trying to explain it is very confusing. Speaking of confusing, Cory owns a bike. Don’t even get me started on his bike. This bike, that Cory owns, Most confusing thing in this entire book. Let’s start off with magic. This book talks a lot about magic. I’m not with witches and wizards like Harry Potter. Magic just happening in every day life. Actual magic I mean. Like boys growing wings and flying away. A bike smashing into a car with no rider on it. Bullets turning into garden snakes all of a sudden. All these things made no sense whatsoever in any world. I get that sometimes young Cory can be imagining the stuff, but it still seems to have an effect on everyone else in the towel. And that’s when it really starts to make no sense. OK. Back to the bike. This bike has an eye. Literally. The book talks about the bike having an eye. And the bike moving on it’s own. Bikes can’t do that. BIKES ARE INANIMATE OBJECTS. They cannot talk, or move, or see, or do, without something else helping them. For this example, a person. It becomes really hard to tell what is actually happening, what Cory is just imagining or making up for the sake of the story. I really don’t like this book. Two people who have read this far, these are my reasons. There will be more, but do you have permission to stop whenever you deem necessary. Thank you for letting me rant to you. I like someone to listen. Now, back to the nonexistent mystery. One thing this book does not do, among many other things, is let you try and solve the mystery. One of my favorite things about mysteries is trying to solve it before the main character can. I like to piece together the clues with what I know about the characters and figure out which one is guilty. In this book they don’t really give you many characteristics of other people. Until the very end, where they actually tried to solve the mystery. You get some characteristics, but not enough to know who would convict a murder. They also only bring up please, when they feel the murder needs to be brought back up. Which is not very often. At least, not often enough for the readers to actually try and find out who may be guilty. You really never know who may be guilty until the very, very end. They also don’t give you many suspects. Yes, you have everyone in the town. , as I said before, there are not enough characteristics about everyone for them all to be suspects. By the third part of the book you really only have two people who could be murderers. And they don’t even seem like murderers. So you only have two choices, and that’s it, no more. No less. then, a few chapters later, of course, narrows it down to one. And then many chapters later, you figure out that one is the one. And you still have to wait for all these in between chapters to be read as well. I really really really really really don’t like this book. I am classifying it as the worst book I’ve ever read. Not to mention, the teeny-weeny clues that we get make no sense at all. There are some really random clues in there. Some of them don’t even fit together at the end. So the murderer could still be someone else, but it’s not. They tried to connect the clues, and it just doesn’t make too much sense. Like most things in this book. There is too much time spent away from the murder for that to be the summary of the book. The real summary of this book is this boy lives in a small town, with a murder recently having happened. His father is very disturbed by this murder. His mother is very disturbed by his father being disturbed. And the boy is just having a really really messed up life right now. Also his life contains strange and unexpected events that most of the time make no sense. And there you have it, the truth summary of the book boys life by Robert Mccammon. It sounds like a lovely book right. I bet you just can’t wait to go read it. I cannot wait until this school year is over. That. I. Can. Burn. This. Book. And throw a big book burning party. Don’t worry, I’m not a Nazi. I just really hate this book. And I know quite a few other people hate this book too. We could have a hate boys life party. This whole book sucks. None of the events that happened in between the talking about the murderer or actually interesting. They are all just filler to make the book a bit longer. Mostly, I’m ranting because the murder wasn’t the focal point of the story. But, this story had no other potential focal point. It had no plot or whatsoever. Unless, you can call a boy living his strange and terrible life a plot. But I don’t think that’s a real book plot. There has to be some arc to it. Living their life is not an arc readers want to read. Unless their life is amazing. Which his was not. That’s just a person going about their life. And I can’t see why our teacher would have us read this book. There doesn’t seem to be any great takeaways from the book. Most books have a good message to them. Saying like, something about your life and how to live life the best you can live it. This book, had none. It seemed to just be a meaningless jumble of words about this boy is terrible life. There was no true take away. At least, not one that I found. Trust me, I looked. When I get to school, I am having a talk with my English teacher, about why she made us read this book. If she or he says that it was because the district requires it and that they are sorry that I had to put up with this book. That will qualify as an answer. If not, I want to know why in the world the teacher would like this book. It probably is required by the district. But I still want to know if my English teacher would share the same views on this book as I do. I hope so. I have read some reviews that gave this book 5 stars. They said the book was engaging. I would like to ask them how so? Others say the book had a real message to it. I say what message? They are not very specific when they review the book. I am hoping to be much more specific with my review. I would greatly and specifically tell everyone what I hated about this book. So now that I am done with my rant, please know that this book was a complete waste of my time. And the only reason I stayed sane during reading this was because I read something else along with it. I would not recommend you read this book unless you absolutely have to. I am so happy to have finally finished this book.