Customer Reviews

Inexcusable

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(14)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Keir Sarafian is a self-proclaimed "good guy." After all, he says, he has "character witnesses." His two older sisters love, respect and support him, and "people like that don't support monsters." And, of course, there's Keir's dad Ray. Widowed for more than fifteen years, Ray expends all of his energy on his kids (OK, and some on the occasional glass of beer...or two...or more). "You had to be a good guy if you were Ray Sarafian's kid," says Keir. "You couldn't possibly be anything less."

As Keir's narrative unfolds, though, readers may start to question whether Ray's "good guy" persona is really accurate. Troubling chapters that take place in the aftermath of an action that Gigi Boudakian is calling date rape alternate with chapters that tell the story of Keir's senior year in high school. Keir claims that the point of these stories is to tell the truth, to show that he's not the kind of guy who could ever be capable of rape.

As the saga of Keir's senior year unfolds, though, his account raises more questions than it answers. Keir's masterful tackle during the football season, which leaves the tacklee paralyzed and gives Keir the nickname "Killer," is an accident --- right? Clearly Keir wouldn't have gotten all those football scholarships otherwise --- would he? That video that shows a shadowy figure violently hazing the high school's soccer team couldn't be of Keir --- could it? That statue of Paul Revere couldn't have been so utterly destroyed by Keir and his friends in a post-party frenzy --- could it? And, of course, it's normal for Keir to forget all of these episodes after a night of binge drinking and popping pills --- isn't it?

By the end of the novel, the reader, and maybe even Keir himself, is starting to question not only everything Keir claims, but also the premises on which he bases his life. Is his dad really a good influence, or does he enable Keir's problematic behavior? Do Keir's sisters really support him, or has their relationship already been utterly damaged?

"The way it looks is not the way it is," says Keir. This statement is true in more ways than one, as INEXCUSABLE's surprising narrative plays out. Chris Lynch's accomplished novel is bound to get readers thinking about whether or not they can trust this narrator. They're also likely to consider long and hard what it means to be the popular guy, the "good guy," and whether those labels excuse a lot of destructive, dangerous behaviors.

INEXCUSABLE is not only a compelling character study and a powerful, forceful story that will draw in readers --- it's also a thoughtful examination of a certain kind of young man, an exploration that should be practically required reading for high school students today.

--- Reviewed by Norah Piehl

i really really hated this book. which is exactly why it is so very good. from the beginning i was convinced that kier was a sociopath...but the ending which vindicated this theory was anything by satisfying. it burns me up when i think about it even now, which is, i think, exactly what lynch wanted.
lynch's take on modern day high school is extremely authentic.
i remember many boys exactly like this from those years of my own life...destructive, pill popping, line toting, jerks who refuse to take responsibility for their actions and are given leeway because they are good at a sport.
kier rejects all reality checks (like when his sister honestly points out their father's enabling behavior) and when things don't go his way, he invents his own reality in his head, editing the things he doesn't want to see.
quite honestly, this book is unique. a close look at society's tendency to 'hand it all over' to the boys who can kick around a football.

"I am only trying to stop the sound. It looks terrible what I am doing, as I watch my hands doing it...but I am only trying to stop that awful sound and the way it looks is not the way it is.

Keir Sarafian is a good guy. Would brainy older sisters love him if he was a monster? Does a menace to society choose to stay home and play a board game with his father when parties are raging? He doesn't even have a lot of experience with girls, okay? Yet the love of his life, the precious and unattainable Gigi, has accused him of going too far. He loves Gigi and has loved her forever, so why would she accuse him of this? How does Keir appear to the outside world?

In Lynch's award-winning novel, our "good guy," a star football player, a close friend to his widowed down, an admiring younger sibling, faces how his actions appear to the outside world. Keir examines the aftermath of his team's drunken rage on a Paul Revere statue-why does the town not understand the hilarity, the spirity of the statue attack? Why does the living video record of the soccer team party not show the funny parts of the evening, but just the "grotesque, awful, dark, blurry, horror film" of harassing and humiliating acts that our narrator committed?

Inexcusable gets inside the mind of a guy I'd probably label as big-time trouble if I ran into him. Highly recommended for both male and female teens.

This book was fantastic! It offered a realistic view about how even the most well-loved, seemingly perfect young male could corrupt his own life by one staggering decision. The boy seems to make honorable decisions throughout the book: says no to any hard drugs, does not participate in unsportsman-like conduct or hazing other students and maintains loyalty to his family. The entire story, of the boy's senior year in high school, was brought to a close with the question of the perception of a rape he supposedly committed. Did he rape the girl? Was her answer yes because she didn't say no? Did her actions say yes for her? His perception of the event in question is very different from the girl involved. Inexcusable is a book that speaks of truth, lies and the perception of both to different people. I would highly recommend this book for young adults as an eye-opener.

The life of Keir is a string of delusions. He only sees what he wishes to see. He cannot reconcile his reality to actual reality. The situations he puts himself in makes him and unlikable narrator, but one that the reader can even pity somehow. The book is heavy and powerful.

This book is fascinating and disturbing. I couldn't put it down. Inexcusable, by Chris Lynch, is told from the perspective of Keir Sarafian, a high school senior, football kicker, and self-proclaimed "good guy". The very first scene depicts Keir in a bedroom having an intense confrontation with Gigi Boudakian, the girl that he claims to love. Gigi rails against him for what he's just done to her. "I said no" she insists. Keir argues with her, and with himself, because the picture in front of him simply can't be right. He is baffled. He can't possibly have just done this to someone he loves.

The rest of the book consists of a series of flashbacks of Keir's senior year, as he looks at himself, his family, and at recent events in his life. These scenes are interspersed with scenes from the confrontation with Gigi, and the reader only gradually learns what has led up to the conflict in the bedroom.

At first glance, Keir seems like a nice guy. He's popular, with plenty of friends. He's very close to his father and his two older sisters (his mother died when he was young). He has an engaging, self-deprecating voice. However, it becomes clear quite early in the book that there is a disconnect between Keir's view of himself and who he really is.

For example, Keir tackles an opposing player in a football game, permanently injuring the other boy, and costing the boy a chance at a football career. Instead of feeling remorse or empathy, Keir mostly worries about himself, and whether or not other people will perceive him as a monster. He blames the coach who put him in, and even blames the other kid for not getting up when he should have. Other incidents follow, and the pattern of lack of remorse or responsibility, and of blaming other people, strengthens.

Here's an example of Keir's denial and rationalization (not in reference to Gigi, but to another incident): "You can look at a thing and at the time it will look funny, if conditions are right. In the mean light of day an event from the night before might look plain nasty, but that does not automatically render it nasty, in its context. Even if I might partway agree with you about the nastiness in the light, that still doesn't mean that at its original time the thing itself couldn't have been a very different, better thing."

The reader also gradually comes to see that Keir's close family may not be completely healthy. Keir spends most of his evenings at home with his father, playing Risk and drinking beer. He talks with his college sisters on the phone every day. He worries deeply about going away to college himself and leaving his father home alone. He doesn't seem to have any close friends, although he has many acquaintances. Gigi, who he claims to love, plays no part whatsoever in most of the backstory, although they are supposedly longtime friends.

There's a moment where Keir is at a party that speaks to his isolation. He thinks: "I wanted other people. Not any other people but my people. I don't know where or how I had lost my ability to really enjoy hanging around with the general population, but I had well and truly lost it. It was like I couldn't bear to be very long with people other than the people I loved, and the people I loved were a very compact list and all the rest just made me tense and awkward and angry after the first twenty minutes."

Inexcusable was a National Book Award Finalist. Inexcusable is a frightening tale of how someone can appear fine on the surface, but be damaged inside, and how a series of poor choices and chance occurrences can lead to disaster. It's about the truths and lies that we tell ourselves and each other, and the price of emotional isolation from one's peers. Inexcusable is a powerful novel, told from a very risky perspective. I consider this book to be a must read for young adults of both genders. I highly recommend it for adults, too.

This book review was originally published on my blog, Jen Robinson's Book Page, on July 26, 2006.

Use caution when deciding to read 'Inexcusable'. On the whole, this book provides compelling truth about how we justify our terrible actions. But if this book is read by someone who is not ready to read about drugs, sex/rape, and partying then this book is not for them. However, this is a reality that youth today have come face to face with. At first I was appalled by all the swearing and other content in the story, but I realized that this story addresses an important issue that many people want to ignore. If you want to get this book for a young adult, I would make sure they see what an idiot the main character, Keir, is. If they don't, then you have a problem and the book didn't do any good. What I loved the most about the book is that it showed how easy it is to justify terrible actions, or trick yourself into thinking you never did them. This book teaches something that adults and teens really need to understand.

The central figure of Lynch's "Inexcusable" is inexcusably flawed from the first page. Yet, I couldn't help turning the pages. To keep readers interested in such a despicably banal character is no small feat, and Lynch manages to walk a fine line, revealing Keir's humanity without blinking at his depravity. I can imagine fans of Anderson's "Speak" or Flinn's "Breathing Underwater" and "Fade to Black" appreciating this perspective on the psyche of a damaged, dangerous young man. He is, sadly, too recognizable.

"Okay, nobody is really innocent, are they? In real life. Nobody at all can say that they are innocent."

Keir Sarafian plays football, barely. He's the team's kicker, and coach occasionally puts him in for defense or special teams. That's why it's such a shocker when he lays a killer hit on a receiver from the other team. He drops him just like he's been trained--quick, clean, and powerful. The problem arises when the other guy doesn't get up. Crippled. People rile Keir for hurting the guy on purpose or accident, mocknicknaming him Killer Keir. Which is pretty hard to get past, until the football scholarships start arriving in the mail.

"I don't want to prove to you that I'm innocent, Gigi, I just want to prove to you that I'm good. Good is better than innocent because at least it's possible."

To Keir, Gigi Boudakian is the girl above all girls. The cutest. The smartest. The perfect one for him. If only Gigi thought the same about him. To Gigi, Keir is a good friend. She can tell he is good, deep on the inside, which is something she respects and might take things a step further with if Keir wasn't such a goofball.

"It really is terrible when people let you down. It's inexcusable."

Keir doesn't know what to do. His closebuddy father and college sisters, Mary and Fran, can't do anything for him. He's done something unforgiveable. He's taken things too far. He's football fields away from innocent now. But he's still good, right? Even though Gigi wants out and Keir doesn't want to let her go, he can still be good, can't he? Because good is on the inside. No matter what you do. Even if you aren't innocent anymore.

-- Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

To become disillusioned is "to realize that an idea is false or a belief is mistaken (Webster's dictionary)." Disillusionment exposes the unseen, the denied, and the seemingly impossible. And it happens to everyone. The adolescent realizes his dad isn't perfect as he walks in on him looking at porn. The teenager who trusts his perfect girlfriend with all his heart finds out he's been cheated on. Disillusionment can be devastating and life changing.
In the novel Inexcusable, author Chris Lynch powerfully tells the story of the main character Keir as he goes through a series of intense disappointments. The majority of the book is laid out in chronological order, strategically interspersed with chapters describing the effects of one final disappointment.
Through using Keir's voice as the narrator, Lynch gives the reader a glimpse into Keir's psyche. Keir seems to be trying to convince the reader as well as himself that he is a great kid who would "rather stay at home on a Saturday night to play a board game with his dad than go to a party (5)." The reader sees Keir's life change and a shift takes place in Keir's character. His "good guy" mantra continues, yet he begins to slowly creep into "bad guy" behavior. He takes a few drugs, and he begins to drink a bit more with the rest of the football team at parties. Keir fits right into the bad guy mold, yet he adamantly believes that he's still "good guy" and continues trying to convince the reader until the final page.
This typical adolescent internal conflict between who one wants to be and who one really is, is lived by Keir. Just as many kids his age, he experiments with different things, not realizing what he is doing. He takes small steps closer and closer to what he once thought of as inexcusable, and soon arrives there himself.
Over the course of this personal battle, we see Gigi Boudakian, one of the only semi-moral characters in the story, taking Keir under her wing. Keir adores Gigi, and is boarder line obsessed with her. They go to parties together and, after their graduation night filled with drinking and drugs, together drive three hours to see Keir's sisters at their college. As a loyal friend, Gigi sticks by him as his view of life as he's known it is traumatically shattered by his sisters, who tell him that "Ray", their father, is an alcoholic and not exactly perfect. After the horribly traumatic day, Keir misreads Gigi and in a date-rape scenario, has sex with her, thinking it has been consensual.
Throughout the course of these revealing events, the construction of Keir's world has fallen to pile of sticks. He has no idea who he really is. He realizes at the end of the novel that reality has been contradicting his proclaimed self-concept and he is disillusioned. Many adolescents go through these times of disillusionment, which have also been known as "rites of passage" or "coming of age" situations. The readers find themselves questioning the guilt and remorse of Keir. The book does not leave the reader with a happy ending, but rather leaves them with a cloudy image of right and wrong. The ending of this novel is not substantially conclusive, but what can we expect from a novel dealing realistically with a world composed of so much gray matter?