Customer Reviews

Being

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

 

 

This is not a book for people who like neat and tidy happy endings and all their questions answered - it's a gritty and often scary read, raising existential questions in a context very approachable by adolescents. Who or what is this boy? Who is hunting him and why? Is there anywhere left to hide in the world now? Make up your own mind - just as every human has to make up their own mind on who and what they will be (not that most of us have plastic insides to confuse things!).

Definitely worth reading, and stayed with me long afterwards.

After reading "Road Of The Dead" I immediately picked up his next novel "Being". The best advertisement for an author's books is quality. Write a good book, and people will want to go and pick up your next one.

While I like a good hardboiled crime novel, and while "The Road Of The Dead" was a very good one, the whole astral projection thing was way overdone. Here, in "Being", the "super"natural element is the whole point, and is so much more organic to the plot, and it works. Yeah, it really does.

Sixteen-year-old foster kid Robert Smith goes to the hospital for some routine tests for a possible ulcer. He's put under for the tests by the anesthesiologist, only to be constantly woke up by a "something" inside of him. As he wakes, he hears snatches of conversations in which he learns that there is someTHING inside of him, and someone (David Ryan) wants it cut out of him regardless of the cost to Smith. He breaks out, taking anesthesiologist Kamel Ramachandran as a hostage. Robert decides to go to Sainsbury's railway station, where he lets Kamel go and takes a train to anywhere, and uses a credit card he had lifted from Ryan to book a hotel room. It's here that he watches a videotape that he had also lifted from Ryan, which shows exactly what's inside of him, and it ain't pretty. And it ain't human either, and as Robert has found out, it can communicate with him, and it can heal him with remarkable speed. Robert is also becoming SOMETHING else, and Robert's current circumstances are making him violent and dishonest, and he doesn't like that either.

Then Ryan tracks him down, and in escaping he realizes that he has to find a place to hide after finding out that Ryan has had Kamel and the surgeon killed. Robert remembers that an old mate, now dead, of his used to know a woman (Eddi) who specialized in making false IDs. He goes there and things get messy, and in the end he takes her hostage. One thing leads to another, and don't they always, and Robert tells Eddi what's happening, and slowly Eddi realizes that Robert is telling the truth, and that she and Robert are going to have to go on the run together to survive.

They also realize that they are going to have to leave the country to survive. Like "The Road Of The Dead" this is hardboiled crime novel with something extra, but that something extra truly works here and gives this novel a reason to exist.

Ryan is unrelenting, Robert and Eddi are hunted, even while they are building a new life together. Again, Brooks truly understands the rules of NOIR and the hardboiled story method. Stories like "Being" may not always have a clear or a happy ending. We may or may not ever know exactly what is inside of Robert, but, we don't need to, that's all part of the rules of the hardboiled school of writing.

Like "The Road Of The Dead", Brooks doesn't talk down or patronize his audience, he doesn't preach any great moral lessons, he doesn't shy away from the violence, nor does he dwell on it; there are sexual situations, governmental menace, paranoia, and nobody ever gets punished for the crimes they do. This is a crime novel with superscientific elements that just gets darker and darker. This is a top-flight, hardboiled, dark crime and science-fiction novel that may not be for the very young, but those that are looking to upgrade from the common juvenile should love it.

From the back of the book to the first page, this story had a lot of potential. Is he human or something Other? There are no answers in this book. At the end, we still don't know and that question was completely omitted from the story. It's like that really annoying person who says, "Guess what.." and then never tells you What!

Not only was it unsatisfying, but as a librarian thinking of putting it in my middle school library, I didn't because it was full of bad language and under-aged sex. This book went from disappointing to very disappointing. Bleh.

I was very disappointed. What you know when you read the first few pages is what you will know at the end of the book. Literally no more than that.

Required reading for high school freshman English class. Was a pretty good read but weird...

Kevin Brooks' BEING tells of a boy who uncovers a strange past after a hospital visit reveals he is something unusual. He escapes the hospital - but finds himself targeted for murder and having to trust a beautiful thief to help him. Who - or what - Robert is makes for a gripping thriller which is hard to put down.

Sixteen-year-old Robert Smith thinks he has grown up just like every other teenager in Essex, England. Sure, he can't remember much of his childhood. Memories about his birth parents feel manufactured. Hopping around from foster home to foster home through the years, he doesn't recall ever getting sick or seriously injured. All he has are his dreams, and those bad dreams feel real enough.

Dr. Andrews tells Robert that his surgery will be a routine endoscopy, which will check for a stomach ulcer. Everything is going as planned --- IVs, anesthesia, gurneys, doctors, scalpels --- until the anesthesia stops working and Robert wakes up. Doctors are calling for more doctors. Men with holstered pistols stand guard around the room. The confusion increases as the doctors try to figure out what they're seeing. "What the hell are you?" one of them asks. That single line sets Robert off. He has to get out of there. Whatever he does, he must escape.

Stolen cars, guns, fraudulent news stories, murders, kidnapping, fake IDs and secret societies --- the intense chain of events that follows will have readers grasping for answers right along with Robert. Who are these mysterious men in the hospital? What are they looking for? Everyone wants something, especially men packing guns in an operating room. Who are they working for? Who, or what, do they think Robert is?

This is one of those crucial questions --- "Who am I?" If Robert doesn't know who he is, then he doesn't really have much of anything. No beginning. No end. What does it mean if he can't trust what's inside his body? Doctors don't know what's wrong with him. People whom he knows nothing about are trying to kill him. The situation forces him to question all he has ever known and experienced. Everything he thinks he knows is fading. Nothing is permanent anymore. All he has is a gun and the whiteness that fills his brain when things get out of control.

All he has is now.

--- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

I am a teenager, soon going into 9th grade, and i fell in love with this book when I first saw it. I loved the cover, but i also loved the mystery of the words with in. We all wonder who our true selves are, and Robert is a perfet example, having no clue who he is, or who he will ever be. I don't know if I'm making much sense. But I do know that this is an extremely successful book, and i strongly recomend it to ppl of all ages.

I can't wait to read more of Kevin Brooks Books

This is an enjoyable bit of adventure that begins quickly and maintains momentum for most of the story. Although it is good, it falls short of great because the main character, Kevin, is such a loner that there isn't a real person to be interested in. Brooks skillfully moves the action from peril to predicament, but I found myself eventually not caring much if Kevin got away or not. The pacing reminded me of the film version of "The Bourne Identity," or perhaps a PG-13 version of "Run Lola, Run." As a high school teacher, I can imagine "Being" appealing to fans of Alex Rider who are prepared for more grit in their thrillers, but who aren't ready for the length and intrigue of Ludlum.

Robert Smith was waiting for the nurse to call him into the doctor's office to prepare him for his scheduled endoscopy, not realizing it would be the last normal day in his life. Once called into the office, Robert was put under anesthetic and doctors went about putting a tube down his throat in order to find out what was causing his stomach discomfort. Unexpectedly, Robert woke up before he was supposed to and realized he was in a different room with many people he didn't recognize. He heard phrases like, "What is that?" and "Are those wires?" Robert felt every cut made into his body for the exploratory surgery these strange people in black suits were performing on him.

After Robert forced himself off the table, he managed to get a weapon out of the hand of one of the black suits. At gun point, Robert demanded the anesthetist knock out his attackers and then kidnapped him in order to use his car to get away. Next, he set about making himself invisible. He knew he couldn't go to his house where his foster parents lived or any place he'd normally visit. The first night he checked into a hotel for some rest to give himself some time to decide what to do the next day. He was overwhelmed with thoughts about what was inside him. He looked over the evidence he took from the doctor's office, which included a videotape of the endoscopy. On the tape he saw things that should have been impossible.

After a sleepless night, Robert put the first step of his plan in motion. To become a different person, change identities, disappear from the face of the Earth. He went to see a girl named Eddi who was in the business of fake IDs, birth certificates, and other needed credentials to get by in life. What he found when he got to her place was suspicion and uncertainty. Life quickly spiraled out of control for both of them shortly after their paths crossed. Escape to Trejeda on the Canary Islands seemed like the best plan. For a time, life fell into the routine of sleeping late, eating fantastic food, and work. Eddi and Robert knew they couldn't hide forever, but they were never prepared for how everything would end.

BEING is an interesting story of an orphan trying to learn his identity. It is filled with intrigue and suspense; however; there are a few loose ends that might leave the reader unsatisfied.

Reviewed by: Karin Perry