12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
YOU WON'T PUT THIS BOOK DOWN AND YOU WON'T FORGET IT, September 3, 2007
This review is from: One For Sorrow (Paperback)
"One for Sorrow" is the story of how fifteen year old Adam McCormack slips out of love with life in small town Ohio, how he runs away from home, finds friends, journeys with one to the Bridge of Death and what happens to him afterwards. The novel has been compared to "The Lovely Bones" and to "Catcher in the Rye". But it has none of the sentimentality of Bones: the teenage ghosts whom Adam encounters - a murdered boy and an abused girl who killed her parents - are real in all their sad and terrifying remnants of humanity. And it has none of the unearned cynicism of Catcher. Adam's working class childhood is ripped away from him and the insight he achieves as a result comes at a real cost. I'm in this book. And if you have ever, even for a day or an hour, felt that your soul had lost its light and your heart no longer beat with this world's, then you're in it too.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Brilliant writing, but lacks a satisfying conclusion, October 3, 2007
This review is from: One For Sorrow (Paperback)
I found this to be one of the most unclassifiable, strangest books I've ever read. ONE FOR SORROW, is about a troubled 15-year-old teenage boy, Adam, who endures several tragedies in his life. First, his beloved grandmother, who lives with the family, passes away in her sleep (after predicting it several nights before, based on the suspicious cluster of crows near the house). A few days later, his mother is paralyzed in a car accident, the victim of a drunk-driving accident, leaving her confined to a wheelchair. And a week after that, Jamie "Moonie" Marks, a casual acquaintance at school who's an outcast loser, is murdered. The three events are enough to cause Adam to spiral down in the depths of depression. His situation isn't helped by an uncaring blue-collar father, and a belligerent, pothead older brother, neither of whom seem aware that Adam is perched at the edge of an emotional cliff.
Soon after investigating the place where Jamie's body was found, the boy's ghost haunts Adam and becomes a friend -- or so it seems. At different times in the story, the reader is convinced that the ghost may actually be trying to drive him insane, or could just be trying to have the living boy join him in the other world as a ghost. The dead boy is assumably gay, and the living boy is assumably straight, but their friendship is extraordinarily close, albeit more like brothers than lovers.
The plotline is made more complex by the appearance of Gracie, a slightly older, intellectual girl who was the one who originally found Jamie's dead body. Like Adam, Gracie can also sometimes see the spirits of the dead, but Adam isn't sure whether her warnings to stay away from the ghosts are honest, or whether Gracie has her own designs on the boy.
Set in a small contemporary town in Ohio, the story is an amazing picture of tragedy, interrupted with occasional moments of ironic humor, and though it's told entirely in first-person (from the living boy's point of view), the novel is rich in detail, thoroughly emotional, and yet rings true to the way a modern teenager thinks. Barzak's words are filled with beautiful images and metaphor, including the title phrase, which refers to the warning signs you can sometimes see just by watching flocks of crows. There's a little bit of sex in it, but it's very tasteful, almost chaste, as well as being a little off-center and emotional, yet at the same time, I found it very innocent and realistic.
Despite a gripping first half, I think the story meanders in the second, where Adam spends much of the book in isolation, running away (several times) from his uncaring family to spend more and more time with Jamie the ghost. We're never quite sure if the ghost is real or merely something conjured up from the depths of Adam's imagination; author Barzak comes up with several major riddles -- including the mystery of Jamie's disappearance and murder -- which have no satisfying payoff. And the months that go on while Adam becomes homeless are unrelentingly miserable, though readers may question how a young teenager could avoid being discovered for six months. And the details on Jamie's ghostlike presence seem almost deliberately ambiguous and vague, making the ending almost anti-climactic.
That having been said, this is a remarkable book, and Barzak's writing is sharp and cutting, and has an undeniable impact. Those looking for a Stephen King-esque horror story won't find it here; this is more a coming-of-age story about a neurotic teenager who eventually finds a way to cope with the cruelties of the world around him. Most of the horrors here are of the real-life variety -- poverty, indifference, insensitivity... and in their own way, wind up far more frightening than the creatures of the night.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A dark and enchanting trip worth revisiting, July 15, 2008
This review is from: One For Sorrow (Paperback)
I read this book after reading the Washington Post review of it last year, and really loved it immediately. The voice of the teen narrator was spot on, and the supernatural aspects of the story--the ghost of the dead boy and the little girl from the 1930s, as well as the other dead that wander around in this book--were very eerie and somehow convinced me that, if ghosts existed, this is how they would be. The narrator's family problems, too, were convincing, a sad but sometimes true portrait of the difficulties blue collar Americans face every day. My heart went out to Adam and his family, his friends, his community, both the living and the dead. And recently, while rereading the book, I was heartbroken all over again. This is a sad, spooky, but beautiful and magical book. Read it when you're wanting something different than the usual. Read it when you want to take a dark but hopeful tour through the strange and scary wilderness of the dead.
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