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james_patrick 's review for:
The Whispers
by Greg Howard
One of the largest problems with this book is the main character. He's supposed to be eleven, but behaves and speaks like a five year old. He hasn't got an ounce of maturity. Compare him to other ten years old in pop culture and literature, and they act a lot more grown up and feel much less irritating. They don't keep spouting dictionary definitions like somebody who is learning to write. Most eleven year olds would also wretch at the thought of constantly referring to their dad as 'daddy.' It may be a South USA thing, but to an outsider it comes across as weird.
Then there's the plot itself. The blurb and cover make it look like this will be an adventure story, a fantasy trek through the woods to find a woman who has gone missing. It isn't. It's a dull, repetative trudge that never really has anything resembling action. Yes, it involves a boy and his dog going into the woods to find someone, but that doesn't happen until about one hundred pages in, half way through the book. It is, in short, really boring. I can appreciate its themes of grief and loss, and what it is attempting to do, but it never fully achieves what it is setting out to do, which is a shame because there is, I think, an important story to be told out of those themes.
What really put me off this book, however, was the perverted and needless sexualisation. If the main character was a bit older then I might be more willing to forgive any transgressions, but when he's eleven it's a big, off putting, red flag. The idea of an eleven and a fourteen year old being together in a relationship, which is alluded to throughout the book, is really wrong. It almost comes across as sinister. On top of that, the book also refers to erections, albeit euphemistically, and at one point wet dreams (which is so wrong that I wanted to book down and burn it). It's at this point you start to wonder how the book got published in the state that it is, why nobody sat the author down and told him to change things.
On top of that, it is not very well written. The prose is not elegant. The style is meandering. It is, overall, amateurish.
(1/2 a star)
Then there's the plot itself. The blurb and cover make it look like this will be an adventure story, a fantasy trek through the woods to find a woman who has gone missing. It isn't. It's a dull, repetative trudge that never really has anything resembling action. Yes, it involves a boy and his dog going into the woods to find someone, but that doesn't happen until about one hundred pages in, half way through the book. It is, in short, really boring. I can appreciate its themes of grief and loss, and what it is attempting to do, but it never fully achieves what it is setting out to do, which is a shame because there is, I think, an important story to be told out of those themes.
What really put me off this book, however, was the perverted and needless sexualisation. If the main character was a bit older then I might be more willing to forgive any transgressions, but when he's eleven it's a big, off putting, red flag. The idea of an eleven and a fourteen year old being together in a relationship, which is alluded to throughout the book, is really wrong. It almost comes across as sinister. On top of that, the book also refers to erections, albeit euphemistically, and at one point wet dreams (which is so wrong that I wanted to book down and burn it). It's at this point you start to wonder how the book got published in the state that it is, why nobody sat the author down and told him to change things.
On top of that, it is not very well written. The prose is not elegant. The style is meandering. It is, overall, amateurish.
(1/2 a star)