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I just started it. Very strange and slow reading. But very different.

Just wondering what others thought.

I read it. It was difficult going at first. It got easier once I realized why the character thought like he did. I did enjoy it and it ended well.

Just downloaded it to my Nook, but have already started another book (The Help), so won't be getting to it for a day or two.

I read a lot more of it last night before bed. I am in the last section. It got to the point where I couldn't put it down. I am loving it.

I'm glad you went farther in the book. I can't say I "loved" it. I found it very disturbing al the way to the end, but the beginning was the hardest. Was glad I did read it, though. Someone told me it was available on audio books. There is no way I could have listened to it in the child's voice.

I can't read things like that. If it's effective my skin will hurt. I have to avoid certain IRL news stories (like Austrian Incest Dungeon Dad, Caylee Anthony, for example) onaccounta the skin hurting thing.

Skye, good point. Audio would not be easy to do with this book.

lady, I understand. I get like that with holocaust movies. I get a pain in my stomach and nauseous. Certain things just do that.

Yes, keep reading. This book is both grueling and disturbing but when all was said and done, I was glad I read it.

I have read it now, just finished it.

Interesting read. I think the author did a pretty good job of looking at the world through the eyes of Jack.

I think this was actually the best novel I've read this year. The plot structure is a cool twist on the archetypal Hero's Quest, and I found the kid's perspective and "voice" authentic and believable.

I like my books pretty dark and twisty, though.

I like my books pretty dark and twisty, though.

Me too. Unless it involves kids or animals.

I really enjoyed this book. I think looking at it from the "how does the mind work" perspective, his thinking patterns remind me of some of the kids I work with. Your mind and world can only be as big as what you have experienced.

I really need to look for more of her books.

Okay, I read it for book club, against my better judgment and it was actually quite good.

It was a bit contrived in places, but Jack's perspective lessened the horror of their reality.

In all, I thought it was well done.

Did I hear it was getting made into a movie?

Reading this now, few chapters in. Not sure about opinion yet.

The first half of the book is the hardest.

I read it on plane trip. It takes awhile to get used to, but I found myself thinking of it afterwards a lot.

bumpety-bump

I'm reading it now. I have to take in little bits, otherwise I get the whim-whams.

The voice is pretty extraordinary. Yes, there are a few flat notes and clunkers, but I find myself remembering how I "saw" the world when I was very small. Immediate, visceral memory, as when memory is stimulated by a smell. That's pretty incredible, especially when you consider so much of our early memory isn't stored as words, and that children are believed to spend a lot of their waking hours in a different brain wave pattern than adults. That the author had access to that way of seeing, to say nothing of being able to articulate it in a way that conveys it wholly to the reader, is quite astounding, IMO.

I also think I would not have gotten nearly as much out of this book before children. Some of the subtleties in the way his mother protects him would have been completely over my head then, and move me to tears now.

ETA: ladyv--I don't get it in my skin. I get it in my leg joints and the soles of my feet. A weird, hot/cold/quivery "feeling," like the "taste" of the inside of your cheek when you've bitten it.

[This message edited by Inchoate at 9:02 PM, September 27th (Tuesday)]

Haven't read it intend to.

I remember Emma as a seven year old. Very strange and quirky. I was in her sister Barbara's class in school. Her Dad is Denis Donoghue, a n Englsh prfessor in our local university when I was in school. He has quite an international reputation!

I can't wait to read it!