Customer Reviews

Being Dead

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Vivian Vande Velde writes with such a sure grasp of teen dialogue, teen humor and teen life one is convinced that she must be a perpetual teenager herself.

The seven stories in this volume are by turns spine-chilling, rib-tickling and heart tugging. Some of them all at once.

Each story gives us a protagonist with a haunting problem, a sense of grim humor and (with the exception of the sweet but predictable "October Chill") a surprising resolution.

Included here is a tale of near perfection...thrills, chills, mystery and even a little comedy..."Drop by Drop" will make you laugh even while it's scaring you out of a year's growth. The protagonist, Brenda, struggles to make friends in a new town--and to wonder WHY she, of her entire family, is haunted by the spirit of an angry little girl. Brenda is so funny about her misery, and so typical of the parentally put-upon teenager that we can't help but be sympathetic to her problem. But as the story (it's a long one--64 pages that fly by) unfolds, clues and ominous hints to the nature of the vicious little ghost are also revealed...and they spell disaster for Brenda. In fact, this story is not terrifying because of the ghost but because of the disaster her revelation will mean for Brenda and her family. I
sat in breathless wonder when I finished this tale. It is the best of a wonderful lot and should be read to all teens of a certain age....

Of the other tales, "Dancing With Marjorie's Ghost" is a great
tale for campfire tellings...the final lines will chill you, "For Love of Him" offers a darker view of romance beyond the grave and "Shadow Brother" will disturb anyone who has an older brother and a father who just don't get along. "The Ghost" is
a short, funny piece that certainly owes much to a certain popular film of a few seasons ago. The title story features one of the wildest ways to die and humorously examines the lengths one will go to to provide for one's family.

In all, a delightfully chilly bit of mist and mirrors, perfect for the young reader who loves ghost stories and wants something fresh, thoughtful and funny.

THREE QUICK POINTS
*Point 1: The cover is creepier than the stories.

*Point 2: The book is a mixed bag. Some stories are little more than incomplete thoughts while others are quite moving.

*Point 3: The prose is smooth and it makes for easy reading.

STORY BREAKDOWN
Being Dead is a collection of seven short stories: Drop by Drop, about a teenager and her family moving to a new home; Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost, about a man being visited by his late wife; Shadow Brother, about a father's spiral into madness; Ghost Story, about collegians moving into a haunted house; For Love of Him, about a young boy entranced by gravestones; October Chill, a romance between a terminally ill girl and a colonial soldier; and Being Dead, about the experience of a young depression era boy and his family.

MY THOUGHTS
This book was a mixed bag of stories. A couple of them amounted to no more than incomplete thoughts with unrealized potential. Shadow Brother and For Love of Him fall into this category. A few were simply mediocre, or rehashed versions of older ghost stories. Drop by Drop, Dancing with Marjorie's Ghost, and Ghost Story fall into this category. I will say, however, that these three stories were entertaining and what relegated Drop by Drop to this group was its ending, which was trite. But a couple were truly works of art. October Chill and Being Dead, the two final stories in the book, fall into this category. In fact, these two stories alone bumped this review from three stars to four. Both of them left me with a desire to read more, but I didn't feel as though I didn't know enough and both managed to tug at my heartstrings. With Being Dead, my favorite of the bunch, I felt myself gasping at times and laughing at others; there's also a fun twist. (I won't mention it because it would spoil the story.)

Overall, this is a great book to pass some time with. There's nothing overtly frightening about it, but a few stories may give you a goose bump or two, especially younger readers. The gore and explicit situations are also kept to a minimum so I wouldn't have a problem recommending it to younger readers.

(3.5 Stars)

Being Dead is a collection of seven ghost stories which range from creepy to funny to poignant, but I should also warn you that you won't find too much to keep you awake with fright between its covers. (It doesn't mean it's a bad book, though.)

Drop by Drop tells the tale of a teenage girl, moving to a rural area with her family, who becomes haunted by a young girl. There was one section in the story which made me gasp because, despite knowing I should have, I didn't see it coming. The first three-quarters of the story was a great lead-in for the climax, but that's where it died. The ending was predictable if not the twist; there's an important lesson in there that I daresay seems disjointed.

Dancing With Marjorie's Ghost is a cautionary tale that reads like something familiar (woman comes back from grave at the request of her "grieving" husband). It's main tenet is to be careful what you wish for (and watch out for karma). Despite its seeming familiarity, it was a simple, quick, and fun read.

Shadow Brother is the story of a family torn apart when the eldest son, Kevin, is drafted for the Vietnam war and dies in battle. Stricken with grief and guilt, his father spirals downhill. A ghost is alluded to, but at the end, it's still a question. Unfortunately, this story fell apart for me partly because of the characterization--they didn't seem entirely believable, especially the relationship between Sarah, Kevin's younger sister and the story's narrator, and her cousin Dwight--and because it seemed more like a patchwork story than a well-flowing one.

Ghost Story is rather straightforward: Collegians start moving into a haunted house, then quickly move out. That's the entire story and it was a super-quick read to boot, but it had me chuckling by the end.

For Love of Him had plenty of unrealized potential. It's about a young man who becomes captivated by the historical gravestones of a man and woman who wouldn't have been much older than him when they died. His obsession soon takes a near deadly turn until the intervention of a mysterious almost-stranger. I wanted to love it--the atmosphere and backstory left plenty of room for growth, but it was vague in all the wrong places and it resulted in a highly predictable ending.

October Chill looks through the eyes of a young girl dying from a brain tumor who meets the ghost of a colonial soldier while working in a recreated colonial village and falls in love. By the end of the story I was wishing it were a full-length novel because I was intrigued by the young man's story and wanted to see more development between them; it all happened and ended too quickly although the story was certainly enjoyable. More heart-tugging than scary with a bittersweet ending.

Being Dead, the book's namesake, transpires during the great depression. A paperboy who meets with a fine piece of luck moments before his untimely death must find a way to deliver an important message to his mother and sister. The voice of the story is vastly different from the previous stories and may throw the reader off-kilter for a moment, but one can quickly acclimate. The story is smooth, poignant, and hilarious--I won't mention *how* the paperboy dies, but I will say I should have, but didn't, see it coming. The events following his death were enough to build the frustration and by the end of the story, when the final message is delivered, I was misty-eyed. By far the most well-balanced and well-written story in the bunch.

Despite not loving two of the stories and finding another two somewhat inchoate, the remaining stories (Ghost Story, October Chill, and Being Dead) certainly made the book a worthwhile read.

Vivian might technically be a "young adult" writer, but let me tell you, this book kept me listening for things that go bump-in-the-night long after I turned the lights out!

Good stuff this! I loved it!

This was one of my first book purchases for my new Kindle. What a fun read! All the stories are different from each other in terms of style and most have a twist of some kind. I really enjoyed them and several stories definitely gave me the creeps! It was a pleasant surprise that the author lives in Rochester and mentions some places in Central New York. I'll be looking for more of her writing.

Do you enjoy feeling invisible fingers tickling their way up your spine? Or perhaps you like shivering in fright as beads of cold sweat trickle down your temples. Being Dead by renowned fantasy author Vivian Vande Velde will surely have you cowering beneath your bedcovers while you are reading any one of the seven stories in this anthology.

Being Dead opens with an odd tale. It tells the story of Brenda--a regular teenager who has problems with her little brother, parents, and the new town she's just moved in to. But when she meets a ghost, her life takes a turn for the worse. Each of the six stories after Brenda's tale all happen in their own particular setting, and themes range from love at first sight to bitter sorrow to false courage. Although I had trouble sleeping after I had finished the book, I still enjoyed it immensely.

Vivian Vande Velde's style varies from genre to genre, and from theme to theme. Even then, she continues to evaluate the setting her characters exist in and begins to form a particular voice from there. One can hear the distinctive tough-guy drawl of a Big Apple newsboy in the 1920s very well; the whisper of a dying girl in our present era is articulated just as carefully. Her writing is easy to digest and she does not overload on description like some authors of fantasy do.

I would recommend this book to an audience of an adolescent age. Adults may find the stories a trifle because most of the stories in Being Dead are about middle-to-high school age kids. I would rate this book four stars, omitting the last star because all of the seven tales seem empty in their depth and moral.

Being Dead by Vivian Vande Velde is a book that left me quite unsure of what to expect when I picked it up the other day. It had a couple of interesting reviews on the front and back stating how scary the stories were and claiming that they would keep you restless for several nights at a time. After reading the first story, Drop by Drop, I was blown away at how amazingly unexpected the ending was and how likeable Brenda (the main character) was. The story itself is about a girl (Brenda) moving into an old house in Upstate, New York and discovering that the little girl who haunts her isn't all she's cracked up to be. The other stories in the book were amazing, too, but I felt that none of them really were comparable to Drop by Drop.
I reccomend this book to readers of all ages, preferably those who, like me, were in dire need of a spooky tale to tell their friends at an upcoming sleepover. Enjoy!

In the novel, Being Dead by Vivian Vande Velde, there are three short stories. I thought all three were pretty scary, and like the cover of the book says, "It will make you sleep with the lights on." It was that scary. I thought out of the three stories the first story, Drop by Drop was the most shocking. Normally I am not scared by ghost stories, but this one scared me. Moving into the new house with her family, Brenda being a teenager does not want to move in the first place. Then the scary things start happening to her, like the spooky phone call with no reply, then the little girl screaming, "Help me!", also when she finds the human hand in her back yard pond. The part that scared me the most was when Brenda was in the bath tub and her family went out for pizza in town so she was all alone, then she feels a drop on her arm. Five minutes later she realizes that drop was a blood drop, only to look up and see the dead girl standing over her! That was pretty creepy. If you are looking for a book that will make you have to sleep with the lights on, then this is the right book for you. Take my advice and read it!

Hope this helps,
Kristi
Shanghai

The book "Being Dead" has seven stories that are scary. One of the stories that i like is Drop by Drop. Drop by Drop is about a girl name Brenda who moves to a new town with her parents. The same day that she moved in she goes to the pond in back of her house. Then all of a sudden she sees a hand in the pond and she just jumps in to see if anyone was drowning. But when she jumps in there was nobody in the pond cause it was only 1 1/2 in. long. Brenda kept seeing the goes until she found out that seh killed a gril when she was driving to her friends house. Then it goes on. i recommend that you read this book becuase it's a good book to read at night and you'll never put it down when you start to read it. That's if you like scary stories.

This is a wonderful collection of ghost stories. Although the collection is titled after the final story, it is more about being alive than being dead. Most of the stories deal with hard issues as well as the ghost. The stories are as follows.

Drop By Drop - A 16-year-old has to put up with her family's move from city to country. To make it worse, the ghost of a young girl is trying to tell her something.
Dancing With Marjorie's Ghost - Beware of what you promise the dead.
Shadow Brother - A young girl has to deal with her brother reluctantly going to war in Viet Nam.
The Ghost - Students move into a house that was the scene of a murder. The ghost has different ideas.
For Love Of Him - A boy becomes fascinated with a tombstone for two lovers who died two days apart. He seems to get sucked into their history.
October Chill - A girl dying of cancer discovers she can see a ghost at the museum where she works.
Being Dead - At the start of the Great Depression, a young paperboy gets killed when a jumper lands on him. He can move on but decides to straighten out a few things first.

I was pleased by all of these stories. The author shows a real sensitivity to the plights of the characters. The collection is split in the middle by the almost humorous "The Ghost" which is far less serious than the three stories before or after it. Check it out.