Hardcover, 455 pages
English language
Published Jan. 18, 2016 by Simon Pulse.
From the author of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes a brand-new novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Only he isn’t sure he wants to.
After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year.
Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.
But Henry is a scientist first, and …
From the author of The Five Stages of Andrew Brawley comes a brand-new novel about a teenage boy who must decide whether or not the world is worth saving.
Henry Denton has spent years being periodically abducted by aliens. Then the aliens give him an ultimatum: The world will end in 144 days, and all Henry has to do to stop it is push a big red button.
Only he isn’t sure he wants to.
After all, life hasn’t been great for Henry. His mom is a struggling waitress held together by a thin layer of cigarette smoke. His brother is a jobless dropout who just knocked someone up. His grandmother is slowly losing herself to Alzheimer’s. And Henry is still dealing with the grief of his boyfriend’s suicide last year.
Wiping the slate clean sounds like a pretty good choice to him.
But Henry is a scientist first, and facing the question thoroughly and logically, he begins to look for pros and cons: in the bully who is his perpetual one-night stand, in the best friend who betrayed him, in the brilliant and mysterious boy who walked into the wrong class. Weighing the pain and the joy that surrounds him, Henry is left with the ultimate choice: push the button and save the planet and everyone on it…or let the world—and his pain—be destroyed forever.
This is my (YA) achilles heel. I will die defending this book and I don't care if the author is a republican or whatever crap
Just awful. I bought the book after reading the blurb, which suggested a philosophical science fiction book (although having re-read it I can now see the warning signs of excessive teen angst). Unfortunately, the book is a complete mess; one I'd have given up on quickly if its review score hadn't been so positive. The author's decision to touch on such a wide range of subjects doesn't allow him to delve deeply into any of the issues. A few issues: the writing is dry and simplistic; we're told a character feels something, but aren't shown that they do; horrific acts are frequently brushed aside; relationships and motivations never feel convincing; and the book is overly crude despite its framing as an extra credit report. It's also incredibly repetitive and overly long. Finally, and given my reason for reading the book, most damningly, it doesn't do a decent job of attempting …
Just awful. I bought the book after reading the blurb, which suggested a philosophical science fiction book (although having re-read it I can now see the warning signs of excessive teen angst). Unfortunately, the book is a complete mess; one I'd have given up on quickly if its review score hadn't been so positive. The author's decision to touch on such a wide range of subjects doesn't allow him to delve deeply into any of the issues. A few issues: the writing is dry and simplistic; we're told a character feels something, but aren't shown that they do; horrific acts are frequently brushed aside; relationships and motivations never feel convincing; and the book is overly crude despite its framing as an extra credit report. It's also incredibly repetitive and overly long. Finally, and given my reason for reading the book, most damningly, it doesn't do a decent job of attempting to solve the question posed by the aliens: why not press the button? There wouldn't be anyone around to miss out on those good experiences if everyone is dead. I breathed a sign of relief when I saw the Acknowledgements page and plan to immediately start another book to remove the bad taste this has left.
If the world were going to be destroyed and you could stop it, would you? More tension there than Hitchhikers Guide which destroys it right at the beginning. And then there's [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem|Liu Cixin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415428227s/20518872.jpg|25696480] which I am linking to because it was so excellent. There, the Earth was spared (so far) but I had sided with those who wanted to wipe out humanity, and not just because I was bullied as a kid (I was!) Also for the Cultural Revolution. And the we-are-bugs metaphor was different: Bugs are easily crushed under foot and yet manage to survive anyway. Go read this book now!
From the standpoint of a character in a novel, the book is the world and that world ends when the book is finished. It would end for me when I abandoned the book and I was considering it. This seems to be my year …
If the world were going to be destroyed and you could stop it, would you? More tension there than Hitchhikers Guide which destroys it right at the beginning. And then there's [b:The Three-Body Problem|20518872|The Three-Body Problem|Liu Cixin|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1415428227s/20518872.jpg|25696480] which I am linking to because it was so excellent. There, the Earth was spared (so far) but I had sided with those who wanted to wipe out humanity, and not just because I was bullied as a kid (I was!) Also for the Cultural Revolution. And the we-are-bugs metaphor was different: Bugs are easily crushed under foot and yet manage to survive anyway. Go read this book now!
From the standpoint of a character in a novel, the book is the world and that world ends when the book is finished. It would end for me when I abandoned the book and I was considering it. This seems to be my year for abandoning books. I'd just given up on a DeLillo novel, and I thought he was immune from such rough treatment at my hands. I put aside a Vernor Vinge (but I'll probably return to it) to read Ants because it was so beloved.
The characters have the subtlety of a Harry Potter character and a similar psychology. (I am not a Rowling fan.) But I understand that good novels are hard to write while bad reviews are easy and the gratuitous cruelty that pervades the book (so far) has made me want to be kind. And I read a review herein where the author said, at 66% of the way in, that his rating was about to drop below three stars but the ending saved it.
And so, I will trust this reviewer (with the wonderful handle "snotchocheese") (I'm not quite at 66% yet) and shall continue.
But I'm still betting that Henry ends up with Diego and decides to save the world, as I was betting from the first scene where Diego shows up.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Well I mostly lost my bet. Not totally but as to the specifics. I did guess that
[spoiler alert]
Audrey broke the car windows so I get some credit.
And it did get better. Not super better but it gets its full 3 stars.
Here's the thing about ants. They cooperate. They don't try to hurt each other for the sheer joy of it. And here's the thing about so-called mental illness. It's rarely if ever about brain chemicals. If it's a mystery, it's because we are mysteries to ourselves and others; not because the narratives of our lives don't make sense. And we are mysteries because, mainly, we don't want to know--about others because they hide from us and because we don't pay attention because we're too self-involved, and about ourselves because we're afraid of what we'll find out.
That's overly simplified but oversimplification is keeping with the style of this kind of book. And the cruelty doesn't go away when you leave high school. It just changes form so that you can't see it so clearly. That's part of keeping things mysterious. And in that context, mental illness becomes the ability to fit in with the hidden cruelties now packaged as law enforcement, war, healthy competition, employment, the virtue of selfishness. We grow (as Charlie? says) a thinker skin, which means we become less sensitive, which means we become more out of touch with reality but more in tune with our culture.
