Customer Reviews

Invisible

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

"Trouble

Oh trouble set me free

I have seen your face

And it's too much too much for me

Trouble

Oh trouble can't you see

You're eating my heart away

And there's nothing much left of me"

--Cat Stevens, "Trouble"

Pete Hautman's INVISIBLE is going to make for one hot booktalk.

"My full and proper name is Douglas MacArthur Hanson. I am named after Douglas MacArthur, the famous general, who was a second cousin of my father's great-aunt. Everyone on my father's side is named after some famous person we are supposedly related to. My father's name is Henry Clay Hanson. Henry Clay was a politician who died before the Civil War. He was my grandfather's cousin's great-uncle. Or something like that. It goes on and on. Since my grandfather's name was George Washington Hanson, I guess I'm related to the father of our country too. Anyway, I'm glad I got named after a general instead of a politician. I think it makes me sound more respectable.

"Usually when I meet someone for the first time, I tell them my full and proper name. Then I say, 'But you can call me General.' Some people find this amusing. Andy always laughs. Sometimes he calls me General, just to tease me. I don't mind. I kind of like it. I am very easy to get along with.

"My mother would not agree with that. She finds me difficult. In fact, she thinks that I am troubled and disturbed. I find it troubling that she finds me disturbing, so she must be right.

"Right?"

In a spectacular and tense piece of writing that recalls my favorite Cormier novel, I AM THE CHEESE, but with the strings pulled even tighter, Pete Hautman has created a disturbingly real character whose troubled life will cause you nightmares.

" 'Haven't I seen you somewhere in hell,

or was it just an accident?' "

--Jimi Hendrix, "My Friend"

Dougie is a loner who is thoroughly obsessed with the model train world he has created in the basement, with numbers and order, and with the beautiful Melissa Haverman. His best friend and next door neighbor, the popular Andy Morrow, is both a drama kid and the star quarterback on the football team.

"And it's burn baby burn

When am I going to get my turn?"

--Bruce Cockburn, "Burn"

"Do I strike you as troubled?

"Let me give you some facts and figures. I am seventeen years old. I am a junior at Fairview Central. I have never skipped school and I have a 3.4 grade point average. I do not use drugs or alcohol. I have never been seriously ill. I have never broken a bone, lost a limb, or had an organ removed. I am scrupulously honest, except for necessary lies. I sleep well at night. I am not a loner. I have a best friend."

Do NOT believe him.

And do NOT start reading INVISIBLE if you have to be anywhere important in the next couple of hours.

Pete Hautman's Invisible focuses on Doug Hanson, a seventeen-year-old boy who is considered a nerd. In this mysterious and tense novel Doug is bullied by other boys and the girls think he is weird. Doug's hobby is building a huge model train track that almost fills his whole basement. Throughout all of this, Andy, his best friend, encourages him and shares similar interests; only he is a cool, popular football player. Every time Doug mentions Andy, his parents look at each other. Doug doesn't understand why he is sent to therapy and given pills that make him unclear and sleepy all the time. Through the story Doug tries to conceal an event that happened to Andy and him a few years before. The story is finally uncovered, and Doug's life changes forever.

I enjoyed this book because it kept me reading and reading. After I finished it, I couldn't stop thinking about the twisty ending. It was an easy read, but keeps you involved and thinking. I think it is a good level for eleven through fourteen year old girls and boys who like realistic fiction.

This comes in as one of my favorite YA reads published in 2005. There is brilliance, elegance, and genius in simplicity, and Pete Hautman's Invisible exemplifies this maxim. Despite the fact that it is less than 150 pages long, with a large font and short chapters, Invisible covers years of events, actions, and emotions with remarkable clarity.

Teenaged Doug Hanson is a freak--he stares inappropriately at girls, he is despised by his classmates, he has a fascination with fire, he dwells on various ways of death (fire vs. freezing), and he can produce nothing in art class other than repeated versions of his signet. The only person who understands Doug is his next door neighbor, the popular football player Andy, Doug and Andy chat through their windows at night, and Andy advises his friend not to be so risky with his habit of spying on girls in their bedrooms. Too bad Doug's parents and his therapist think he's talking to himself when he converses with Andy.

Invisible is a brilliant look inside the man of a troubled teen, one who has criminal incidents in his past, no friends in the present, and an absolute obsession with both model trains and pyrotechnics. The narrative voice of this novel is pure poetry.

cover is striking (haha) but it doesn't give you a clue just how truely disturbed this kid is. another reviewer said this book would be a great book-talk and oh how right his is!!

although the book is predictable and the ending is almost christopher pike-ish (blah), this story delves deep into the guilt ridden psyche and delivers a burning (haha, sorry couldn't resist) and complex narrative.

dougie is obviously insane, his parents are odd (which makes me wonder if this is hereditary) and one wonders why andy would still talk to such a freak. i can't say i wouldn't have reacted in a similar fashion (even including the beat-up) if i caught a guy like that looking in my window.

dougie's fixation on anything but the real issues is sad, and reading about his freakish behavior is like staring at a car wreck.

this book is a great read.

Douglas MacArthur Hanlon has a lot of problems to contend with. He suffers from mental illness and his behavior is erratic, bizarre and even dangerous. In addition to the mental illness, he appears to have some autistic traits (autism is a neurobiological condition and NOT a mental illness) as well. His obsessiveness; special interests; narrow focus on his special interest and his extreme devotion to minute detail are typical of people with Asperger's Syndrome, which is on the autism spectrum. He is also one of the most unappealing characters in creation.

The boy was close to a neighbor named Andy. Doug and Andy were inseparable friends who shared a morbid interest in fire. A fire in a treehouse shatters Doug's very existence and literally rocks his world. From that point on, he becomes obsessed with Andy. This obsession segues into other bizarre behavior, such as talking to himself. This problem escalates to the point where a neighbor complains Doug is keeping him awake at night. Doug coins the neologism "sigil," for "signature/initials" where he encrypts his initals into Andy's in a picture form. He insists on drawing this sigil on everything, much to the dismay of his art teacher.

His English teacher tells him to expand his interests and write papers on topics other than his special interest. Doug's attention to detail does have a plus side in that he has created a miniature village replete with a train made entirely out of matchsticks. He even has the number of matchsticks he needs and the measurements of the imaginary town figured out to the last fraction of an inch.

The boy's parents worry about him and have him seeing a psychiatrist. The doctor does not appear to be overly helpful and prescribes medication that knocks Doug out. He then stops taking the pills which didn't sound helpful in the first place. The psychiatrist has the audacity to drop in on Dougie at his home after he skipped an appointment. Who authorized that? To make matters worse, she has the temerity to try to touch the town Dougie painstakingly created out of matchsticks. He slapped her hand away and one feels that served the doctor right.

Pills or no pills, his behavior becomes even more destructive and erratic. His obsession with Andy worsens; he insists Andy tells him to do things that he would never have thought to do. He stalks a classmate, even climbing a tree outside her window so he can watch her get undressed. This continues until someone sees him. This latest incident helps unravel him further, at home and in school. Other kids shun him and a group of boys attack him to the point of severe injury. Doug's delusions become even more inflamed and the results are tragic and reduced to ash.

A very cutting edge book that will certainly remain in the minds of those who read it.

This is a sad, unsettling tale. A tragic event precipitates Douglas Hanson's downward spiral into debilitating mental illness. I found the story disturbing as an adult reader, and can only imagine how a young reader will wrestle with its powerful images of mental breakdown. Some scenes and images are highly emotionally-charged and discomforting.

I listened to Invisible unabridged on audio, narrated by Norm Lee. Lee gives a compelling performance, balancing Douglas' teenage perception of reality with dark, often creepy delusions that torment him.

Invisible

The book Invisible by Pete Hautman is an unusual novel to read, with its odd characters and convincing writing. It takes place in present day while the main character flashes back to his past and tells about himself as a child. This book is about a teenage boy named Doug who doesn't fit in, but feels like he has his own identity. His best friend Andy is popular at school and is a quarterback on the football team. They spend as much time together as possible, and have a close relationship. Doug's parents do not approve of Andy and think he spends too much time with his best friend. In Doug's free time, he builds trains and bridges, but does not spend enough time interacting with others. His parents think this is a problem and are concerned about his well being. Do to this, they send Doug to a psychologist to overcome his problems. Doug does not agree with his parents, although he is very oblivious and gets himself into trouble around the neighborhood. In this book, Doug doesn't realize how his best friend and his troubles in his childhood have affected him, causing an unforeseen ending with a twist.

Invisible is definitely worth reading, although it is hard to catch on and understand the main character, Doug, in the beginning of the book. However, Doug being very different makes the book interesting to read, along with his best friend Andy. The author, Pete Hautman, is very compelling in his writing, adding plenty of humor and making it easy to connect with the book. The best part of this novel is the ending conclusion, since it is so unexpected and unusual. This causes the reader to do lots of thinking once finished with the book, while trying to put the pieces together. This is a great way to end a good book. As a result, Invisible has such a peculiar topic and surprising ending, it stands out from other books, making it unquestionably worth reading.

Hautman adds his name to the growing list of YA authors using a protagonist whose point of view comes from a "troubled" mind. Douglas MacArthur Hanson is 17 (the magic number -- keep an eye on it) and a geek whose obsession is the railroad system he is building in his basement (out of matches, yet!). The other unusual thing about Doug is his best friend, Andy Morrow. Andy is the high school quarterback -- a popular jock who you wouldn't ordinarily associate with a geek of Doug's proportions.

More successful than, say, Terry Trueman's INSIDE OUT, Hautman's INVISIBLE delivers on the characterization as we get a real idea of what it is like to be inside this very unusual young man's mind. He's both perceptive and odd, and his observations of teachers, the principal, his parents, and his med-pushing psychiatrist (Dr. Ahlstrom) are not only accurate but amusing. Too bad Doug's plight isn't so amusing.

For one thing, he has this Peeping Tom thing for his beautiful classmate, Melissa Haverman. Not a good idea. As Andy keeps warning him, "You're gonna get caught." OK. Beginner's foreshadowing at work here. And the fallout, as you might predict, is rather ugly, too.

But you probably won't predict the ending -- which is good, if you like that sort of thing. Most teenagers will find this character as fascinating and as difficult to ignore as (if you'll excuse the expression) a train wreck. Good plot, better characterization, and some fun graphics of sigils (another Doug Hanson obsession) as a bonus. Pretty good stuff, then.

Seventeen-year-old Doug Hanson just wants to be alone with his trains. No one understands him except his best friend, Andy. His parents make him see a counselor, which he knows is pointless: Dr. Ahlstrom is not helping me one bit. Why? Because I do not need help--it's as simple as that (p. 22). So he doesn't want to make new friends or hang out with the kids at school--does that make him "troubled?" Of course not. But only Andy seems to understand that and accept him as he is.

Hautman draws the reader into the world he creates and holds them captive. One becomes as mesmerized with the model bridge Doug is building as he is; after a couple of rounds of counting by seventeens, this reader finds herself giving it a try. As the story unfolds, she begins to wish everyone would just get off Doug's back and let him build his models. Must everyone be popular, after all?

INVISIBLE is an excellent choice for readers who enjoy a bit of mystery with their realism, and Hautman is a master of words, only revealing "why" when the reader is least cognizant that there is even a question waiting to be answered.

Reviewed by: Mechele R. Dillard

I enjoyed this book. It was one of those stories where not much is happening, but you keep reading. In fact, you don't want to stop.

As others have said, it is rather predictable. Pretty early on you can guess what's really going on. But before you shun this book alltogether, just hear me out: I actually think it's better if you know the "plot twist" before the author officially tells you, that way you understand and accept all Dougie's idiosyncrasies. If you didn't see it coming, you'd think, "This is retarded," and quit reading. If you did that, you'd be missing out.

Someone else complained about "not caring about Dougie." I noticed that too. I'm one that usually has to like my characters before I like the book. Though I didn't have a lot of love for Dougie, I feel it's not necessary for Invisible. Reading this story feels more like observing someone, rather than getting to know and caring about someone. That is why the fact that Dougie isn't exactly a lovable character really isn't relevant.

This is a good book. It deserves to be read.