Customer Reviews

Nothing (Teller, Janne)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

NOTHING, originally published in Danish, is stunning, disturbing. It lingers in your mind and makes you think the way haunting montages of unpleasant moments in history do.

NOTHING is published as YA, but despite the fact that seventh graders make up most of the characters, this book requires a strong sense of maturity and open-mindedness in order to be the most appreciated. It is not an easy read: few of the characters ever manifest themselves into memorable individuals, but as a collective, their actions and the changes their group mentality undergo are profoundly unsettling. NOTHING touches upon philosophy (Pierre Anthon's cries of nothingness) and masochism (the things they force one another to do or give up) in a way that both enthralls you and forces you to think about serious philosophical themes.

This is a small book, but it is by no means light. Janne Teller's writing is powerful and memorable in its sparseness. She lets the children's horrifying actions unfold and create the book's chilling atmosphere themselves, keeping authorial interventions of description to a minimum. If you're looking for something dark, unusual, and thought-provoking, I can't recommend this book to you enough. It is unlike anything out there and is simply remarkable.

The inside cover refers to this novel as "Lord of the Flies of the 21st century." How apt. Expect to be shocked and disturbed as you were the first time you read Lord of the Flies. While I'm glad I read this and enjoyed the provocative thoughts behind the story, I'm concerned about young people picking this up and reading it without some kind of adult to help them find their own Heap of Meaning in this book. I think it would give my 12-year-old daughter nightmares. Based on content, and truly appreciating the message of this book, I'd suggest it is appropriate for 16+. It's a great read for adults.

My Thoughts

Here I am one week after reading and finishing this novel finally typing up a review. I have not been able to actually take time to write about this novel because it was haunting my mind. It would not leave me. I was and in many ways still am speechless about this novel.

This is a deep read. It takes a mature reader or one who has a broad perspective of the world and events to grasp many things talked about in the novel. It is one where at first I was thinking, "Oh man, this is just going to be a boring story about some kids that all turns out happy in the end.". I was so completely wrong and am still not sure how to describe my thoughts.

It is a philosophical read in the sense that it challenges your outlook on life because even though I disagree with Pierre in nothing matters it was hard to argue his rationale many times throughout this story and even now. I am not negative or depressed, but I had to stop several times and ponder what I was reading.

It also has a Lord of the Flies vibe to it in the actions of the other kids who are trying to prove worth in the world by sacrificing things important to them.

Okay, take my word for it that you need to read this book. It will challenge every thought you currently have and in a good way. This book is not for the faint of heart. There are some scenes that are brutal and honest so be aware of this.

This just barely touches the surface of the thoughts that I have, but not sure how else to explain. Read and let me know your thoughts.

A serpent in a fruit tree (this time a seventh grade boy in a plum tree) shares his knowledge with the innocents below (in this case, his pubescent classmates). They try to ignore him but eventually are tempted. Little by little they realize that he is right--the truth is that life is meaningless, where everything can be bought or sold, where history is ignored or forgotten and repeated. When one of the girls loses her innocence--quite literally--evil is introduced in their world and things spiral out of control. It's a little like Lord of the Flies but even more like the story of Adam and Eve--a very well-written, creative, scary retelling of what happens when innocent people take a bite from the tree of knowledge. Can middle-school-aged readers handle this novel? Surely as well as they can handle The Bible.

Pierre Anthon stands up in class one day to announce that life has no meaning and that he is off to go practice being nothing.

Pierre's classmates are confused by what this may mean for them if he is right. What if life has no meaning? They know the only way to carry on is to prove to Pierre Anthon that there is in fact meaning. So they set out to build a heap of meaning. A whole heap of meaningful things in the middle of an abandoned sawmill. When they decide that they too have to contribute to the pile of meaning that's when things get serious. They can't trust a person to give up what is meaningful to them, so everyone has to pick something for someone else to give up. A pair of shoes, a bike, a pet, innocence-as the pile grows so do the stakes. Can all these worthwhile object really make a pile of junk meaningful? Will it convince Pierre Anthon that life has meaning?

Well, let me just start off by saying this book certainly did not happen the way I expected it. I personally don't like to know too much about a book before I read it. A brief summary, a nice cover, or a glimmer of a 5 star review is all I really need. So when I was cataloging this book and saw the writing style, saw that it was translated from Danish, and was a finalist for some awards, I was intrigued. Then I saw the summary from inside the book which read: "When thirteen-year-old Pierre Anthon leaves school to sit in a plum tree and train for becoming part of nothing, his seventh grade classmates set out on a desperate quest for the meaning of life." It seemed like an interesting YA novel about existentialism. When I started reading however, what I had in my hands was a macabre story-still about existentialism-which was very much a coed Lord of the Flies; it was perfect. These kids were left completely unsupervised and left holding a question much bigger than they could fathom. They didn't know when they set out that meaning was a very hard thing to pin down. They did horrible, terrible things in their quest to find meaning for life. If Pierre Anthon wasn't yelling absurdist things at them from the plum tree would they have been driven to such lengths? Possibly not, but something still might have set them off. As soon as one person added something to the heap they were out for blood for the next person. The next person had to give up something much worse, so that the first person's loss didn't seem as devastating. This was a much more brief read than Lord of the Flies, but every bit as pertinent. I think this could be taught right alongside the greats in a high school English class.

First Line:

"Nothing matters."

Favorite Line:

"Something in Hussain seemed to have been destroyed."

This is supposed to be a book for 12 and up but it's pretty heavy and disturbing. It's by a Danish author and translated into English. A 13-year-old boy decides life has no meaning so what is the point of school, work, dating, or anything. A group of his classmates want to prove him wrong so they start the "heap of meaning" in which each of them must add their most meaningful possession. Each kid chooses something for someone else to add and the choices get more horrible as the book goes on. I could see this book opening quite a discussion with teens--for young teens, they would need to be pretty mature.

Disturbing does not even begin to cover it.

Nothing is a tiny book. It's shorter than most and more narrow. The story takes up slightly more than 200 pages, and those pages contain a lot of white space. Still, it is probably the most disturbing book I've ever read. And almost not even in a good way. Don't get me wrong, Nothing is a wonderfully written book. Not a single word is superfluous and yet the story feels expansive. We see the whole thing from Agnes' point of view, and yet the feelings of others and the crowd mentality of the group are clear. It's got a kind of terrible, terrifying beauty to it.

As Agnes and her classmates try to collect things to counter Pierre Anthon's nothingness, things take a definite turn towards the sinister. If they're going to prove meaning, these things must really mean something to the person who has to give them up. And each time someone has to give something up, they get to choose what the next person has to lose. This accumulation of things starts out as mean and a bit vindictive, but it very quickly spirals out of control until it is not just things that are being accumulated. Friendships break up, kids get in trouble, alliances are formed, and people get both emotionally and physically hurt.

Watching what these kids require of their friends and classmates, what they deam worthy sacrifices to the "heap of meaning," was like driving past a multiple car pile-up on the freeway. It's gruesome and terrible, but you can't help but look. I finished this book in a single day, holding my hand over my gaping mouth for the last 50 pages or so (and more than a few times before that as well). I was repulsed and hooked at the same time. This is an engrossing and haunting read.

Book source: Philly Free Library

This great-looking American edition of Teller's modern classic is almost over-the-top with emo and drama. Everything is cranked up a couple of notches. "Long branches" has become "endless branches", and pages are split up to put the more dramatic sentences on their own page. I don't know if this was a decision made by the editor, the translator or the publisher but it amplifies the tone of the book, which was already strung tightly enough, almost to the point of charicature.

Annoyingly, and this was something that was true of the original too, there's a running theme of adjective comparison. "Scared, more scared, most scared." It didn't work in the original and it just becomes weird in the American version.

This book is a short, tense ride with a lot to think about. If Teller and Aitkens would've toned down the theatrics, we'd have a modern-day The Stranger. As it is, though, the poetics are off-putting.

If you can get into the teen angst and if you aren't embarrassed by your inner emo, the rewards are there, the book delivers. I've read it (in another language) more than ten times. But if you're put off by the over-the-top effects, deduct a couple of stars from my rating.

Even so, I recommend the book. Behind all the grand gesturing and absurd situations, there is a question worth asking, and worth asking seriously.

Why do we do what we do in life? Why and how are we so concerned with our worldly things? Our careers, our looks? What is truly meaningful?

I read the other reviews on this book and I have found many reviews describing this book very disturbing and haunting. Well that's why this book is so great. It sticks in your mind. It might be too much for some people but I am a middle-schooler and I enjoyed this book.

It's a lot smaller than I was expecting it to be, but it was a good book. It had the same air about it as Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, or Living Dead Girl, or 13 Reasons Why. It was dark and morbid and very intense, but that's nice every once in a while.