Customer Reviews

Cut to the Twisp: The Lost Parts of Youth in Revolt and Other Stories

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

 

 

The format of this book is completely ludicrous: it's basically everything cut from "Youth in Revolt" ... up on the page with no context. Everything from two sentences to two pages of cut text is in here introduced only by a "from page X, after words "xxx xxx" in literally hundreds of little excerpts. Imagine if you made a film out of all the scenes that ended up on the cutting room floor -- it makes about that much sense. The only way to truly make sense of this mess is to re-read your copy of "Youth in Revolt" and use this as a companion (which would mean switching books every other page). HOWEVER, if you have read YIR recently, you can somehow make sense of things and it's not totally confusing. And, thankfully, most of the passages function more as stand-alone amusing little anecdotes that were cut for obvious reasons, since they did little to drive the plot. Many, fortunately, don't suffer too much from a lack of context. Thankfully, Payne's wit is enough to make this an enjoyable read for hardcore fans. Be that as it may, the format is just generally annoying, dropping you into situations for a minute or five minutes and you never know quite where you are. Anyone but C.D. Payne cultists should steer clear.

1. If you will be purchasing and reading Youth in Revolt for the first time, this book is a must, for a full story experience. Such vital information is in here, one will be shocked that these parts were deleted from the main novel. These editings were made only for space and money, and not because they were unnecessary. The best way to fuse these two books together is to first mark each "deleted scene" from Cut to the Twisp, with a pencil into the Youth in Revolt book, and thus as you are reading the main book when you come to your pencil star or dot, you will know to read from the slim book, then return to the big book and so on throughout the whole story. Basically you will be reading the two books at once.


2. If you are already a fan of Youth in Revolt, you will delight in finding Cut to the Twisp. A treasure, an newly ignited romance, a deepening of the characters, and an explanation of a number confusions and mysteries. Mark the main book with a pencil and reread this most brilliant story again.

3. The additional non Nick Twisp stories are a bit odd, but we can forgive, and forget since, Nick stories are so gloriously magnificent.

by far one of the funniest and best written books i've ever read. payne does a great job of getting into the mind of a 14 year old. the book flows great, with so much going on at one time, much like real life, yet with adventures that could never be imagined by a normal mundane mind. seriously a great book.