Mr. Was [Hardcover]

Pete Hautman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1, 1996

In order to prevent his mother's murder at the hands of his father, Jack travels back in time fifty-five years through a magic door in his grandfather's house and grows up from that time on.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Ingenious plotting and startling action combine to make this time-travel thriller a riveting read. Trying to escape from his violent father, Jack and his mother move into his late grandfather's mysterious house in Memory, Minn. There, the 13-year-old discovers a door that can hurtle him 50 years into the past. In the present day, Jack's father is rampaging: he calls the boy's mother a "hardheaded bitch," breaks her fingers and eventually kills her with a baseball bat. Jack escapes through the time-travel door, planning to wait 50 years and prevent the crime. Unbeknownst to him, he is becoming entangled in his own family's ugly history: past and future are irremediably entangled. Jack's strange destiny takes him from the bloody battles of WW II Guadalcanal to a government-run mental institution, where he suffers amnesia and a drug-induced type of catatonia. The only real flaw in this feverish page-turner is the pedestrian heaviness of the dialogue. Hautman, the author of three adult novels, can otherwise be commended: his structure is sophisticated without ever overwhelming the reader, and mined with surprises that explode like fireworks. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From School Library Journal

Grade 7-10?In this convoluted time-travel story from an adult novelist, a teenager walks through a (more or less) 50-year "door" in an old house, and falls in love with his own grandmother. After his alcoholic father murders his mother and then goes out in the yard to hang himself, Jack Lund travels back to 1941, where he befriends Scud, an enterprising young hustler, and his fiancee, Andie. Jack and Andie warm to each other. By the time Scud finds out, he and Jack are in the Marines on Guadalcanal; after a savage fight Scud leaves Jack for dead, goes off to marry Andie, has a daughter (Jack's mother), and makes a fortune with the help of a 1996 stock-market page young Jack has by chance brought with him. Alive but disfigured and totally amnesiac, Jack (a.k.a. Mr. Was) spends the next 50 years as a mental patient, beginning to recover only after some illicit acupuncture. He escapes, and travels to his old house?not in time to save his mother, but in time to help his father along with his suicide. Enter Pinky Boggs, apparently a time cop of some sort, who haphazardly destroys evidence of the door's existence and tells Jack that a much older Andie is waiting for him in 1946. Jack goes through the door one last time?and there she is. Hautman devotes less effort to explanations or tying up loose ends than to detailed descriptions of violence, stretching out his account of Jack's parents' deteriorating relationship and throwing in bloody visions when the action lags. Jack is more a vehicle (the story is framed as a series of journals and letters) than a character, showing wear but little growth or change. For a lighter, more logically consistent time-loop story, steer readers to Robert Heinlein's oldie-but-still-goodie, The Door into Summer (Del Rey, 1986).?John Peters, New York Public Library
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Reading level: Ages 12 and up
  
• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing; 1st edition (October 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0689810687
• ISBN-13: 978-0689810688
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,319,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Okay, here's some miscellaneous personal info. I'll try to be as brief as possible. I was born in 1952 in Berkeley, California, or so I am told (I don't really remember). At age five I moved to St. Louis Park, Minnesota where I went to Cedar Manor Elementary School (also the alma mater of Al Franken and the Coen brothers, and no, they are not close personal friends of mine) and eventually graduated honor-free from St. Louis Park High School. This is so tedious. Why do you keep reading? For the next seven years I attended the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Minnesota. Contrary to recent news reports, I did not graduate from either institution. After college I worked various jobs for which I was ill-suited, including sign painter, graphic artist, marketing executive, pineapple slicer, etc. Eventually, having exhausted other options, I decided to write. My first novel, Drawing Dead, was published in 1993. Today, I live with mystery writer and poet Mary Logue in Golden Valley, Minnesota and Stockholm, Wisconsin. We have two small dogs (are you still reading?) named Rene and Jacques. There you have it. Fifty-plus years compressed into a few short paragraphs. Feel free to copy and paste for your book report, but don't tell anybody I suggested it. Need to know more? Check out the FAQs page on my website at http://www.petehautman.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mr. Was is overlooked, September 15, 2002

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Mr. Was (Mass Market Paperback)

When my teacher first suggested it to me I was very sceptical. She had said it was her favorite book she read but it didn't defeat the fact that it was about traveling through a "magical door" that takes yo through time. But I got into it very fast. You try to hold all the facts together and try to understand everything but it will all come as a shock to you in the end for it has a plot twist that rivals that of the Sixth Sense. So many undesserving books aer higher than this in the Booklist. It makes me so upset that some great books (such as this one) get overlooked.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is very adventures, November 17, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Mr. Was (Mass Market Paperback)

Mr. Was is a confusing, exciting book. It won't let you set it down. You will love this book, but you might get lost once in a while, but towards the end it will all make sense. Peter Hautman is a talanted author, and I would suggest you read some of his other books, too.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Intelligent reading for teens, October 20, 2000

By 

K. Denny (southern california) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Mr. Was (Mass Market Paperback)

I happened upon on old Advance Reader's Copy at my local used bookstore today and read it straight through. This is a terrific time travel mystery for teens. Mr. Hautman uses the device of having 'found' the writings, journals, and government papers that make up the novel. The whole package works well - Jack (Mr. Was) is a character that readers will care very much about. The mystery is convoluted enough to keep the reader's mental skills challenged, and all of the questions and story elements are tied up well at the end. I particularly liked the fact that the Boggs family's disappearance is is reintroduced at the novel's conclusion. It gives the reader a whole other time travel mystery that he or she can speculate about. This would be great for a teen reading group, there are many social issues and imaginative questions posed in this novel.