Customer Reviews

One For Sorrow

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

"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.

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.

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.

This book was written by a local author. It was a total surprise to find out we actually had a local author around Youngstown, Ohio, so I was interested to read this and see what Christopher Barzak had to say about the place where I, too, grew up. I was taken with the imagery immediately, the way he captures the blend of Youngstown's urban decay along with the natural world of the surrounding countryside, the sunflowers are a particular real treat, as noted by another reviewer, I see. And the railroad tracks, I might add, the frightening feeling one gets out here on nights when you can go outside and feel as if you're the last soul left alive on earth, and all of the collisions in this book--between drunks, cars, souls, teenagers and adults, social workers and families, psychologists and kids who are too smart and suffer for it. I couldn't put this book down. At no time before in my life had I read a book that addressed this part of the country where I grew up. It was strange and breathtaking to see the foliage and surroundings, the mores and folkways and attitudes and beliefs of the people of this part of the rustbelt given voice. Adam is a rough but also tender narrator. His life is full of darkness and he's seeking the light we are all seeking. I didn't expect the ending to be what it was--somewhat happy, somewhat unresolved, the characters problems almost at the same place where they left off, but maybe with a little bit more hope than before--because usually books either tie everything up in a bow at the end or leave a ton of things unresolved. This felt like a realistic story for me, despite the ghosts and stone hearts that become soft and begin to beat. It reflected what I've seen of life so far, families struggling to stay together and managing to do it even if they get damaged in the process. I don't need or necessarily even want books to reflect the world I already know, but it was really nice to finally come across one that did.

Barzak's debut novel is a heavy hitter. It's a story of being a teenager in a dysfunctional family, going through the trials of the teenage life, of falling in love and having one's heart ripped out, of being confused about the world and about where you're supposed to be. It's about the emotional roller coaster that is the teenage years, dead friends, first loves, and trying to understand one's place in the world. It's the story of Adam, a fifteen-year-old boy who becomes friends with Jamie, someone much like Adam, but who has been brutally killed. But the longer Adam holds on to his friend, the more he seems to lose his touch with everyone around him. Thus begins an adventure of the emotional and the physical.

Perhaps what I most enjoyed about One For Sorrow is the fact that it is different from most everything I have read before. I found the story engrossing and the characters fascinating. I wanted to know from the very start what was going to happen to Adam, what he was going to do to survive it, and how it would all turn out. Essentially, I became emotionally invested in Adam's well being, which is almost always a good thing. I also particularly enjoyed the low-level genre content. The characters took over the story, not the fantastic elements (ghosts, floating out of one's own body, etc.). Most genre work these days is heavily plot oriented, which is great, but it is nice to see some writers pushing the boundaries in the genre. Barzak is certainly pushing the boundaries here by taking genre to a different place from his contemporaries.

I found few things to complain about with this book. Sure, it's not perfect. There were times when I literally had to yell at the characters as if they were real people, because they were absolutely driving me nuts with their realistic stupidity. But that's not necessarily a complaint. The only thing I can say might be a problem for some potential readers is that One For Sorrow doesn't pull punches. There's language and graphic scenes of a sexual nature--though not on the same level as erotica. If you're the type of reader that likes stories that sit more on that line of purity, then this isn't a book for you. Neither is it a book for people that like stories where everything is happy, or where the conflict is simplistic or easy on the emotions. One For Sorrow literally goes into the darker points of teenage existence, but not in that "emo" way: it's all disturbingly real and terrifying. These are things to consider when wondering if this book is the right one for you. Then again, I recommend reading it even if you are a bit on the sensitive side; pushing one's boundaries is always a good thing.

It's a gloriously complicated story, though. So much so I was rather surprised to find that this was a debut novel rather than a fifth or sixth novel. Barzak has a knack for deep character stories--stories that do what all fiction should be doing: discussing the human. Adam is a character you can root for, because even as things go horribly wrong and he makes loads of mistakes, you can't help wanting everything to turn out okay. Does it? You'll have to read the book to find out exactly what happens, but I would say that you should not expect tidy endings for this novel. If you want a story where the end is all flowers and puppies, this book isn't for you. But if you like leaving things a little open, for good reason, then One For Sorrow may be right up your alley. One For Sorrow is almost like life: the end of every great adventure is the start of another.

After finishing "One for Sorrow," I was unable to read anything else for weeks because Adam McCormick's voice was still in my head. I can't remember the last time a read a story with such a genuine and unique character. Adam is simply unclassifiable, and this is the novel's great strength.

Set in small town Ohio, the novel introduces us to Adam, a fifteen year old boy who is at the proverbial crossroads, and yet, there is nothing predictable or expected in Adam's story. His beloved grandmother has recently died, his mother has been paralyzed in a drunk driving accident (the description of which is interestingly lacking in the expected lamenting of social ills), and a his school acquaintance, Jamie Marks, has just been found molested and murdered by the railroad tracks. Adam attaches himself to Jamie's memory/ghost and to the girl, Gracie, who discovered Jamie's body.

What happens next, told entirely through Adam's point of view, is decidedly and beautifully unsettling. Adam uses a closet to travel between the worlds of the living and the dead, where ghosts try to steal his words, and Jamie burns memories to stay warm. Real landmarks take on other world significance in ways that are unexpected, and quite frankly, genius.

Adam's mind is a complex and wonderful place. He is alternately pensive, poetic, naive, self-destructive, and even cruel. The novel and its characters defy classification. We're confronted with a work that presents the complexities of the human psyche through a character with an extraordinarily high level of emotional intelligence and the lack of impulse control of a typical fifteen year old boy. It's a novel of questions about death and life and sexuality and the intersections of past, present, future.

All I can say is read it. "One for Sorrow" is a novel that is thought-provoking and thought-changing. My world view has been forever altered by my time in Adam's mind.

Christopher Barzak's One for Sorrow is one of the more unusual coming-of-age novels I have ever encountered. Although it has been compared with the likes of Catcher in the Rye and The Lovely Bones, it has far more differences than it has things in common with them, sharing only a portion of the broadest themes of those two novels. This very sad YA novel, especially its ambiguously hopeful ending, is likely to strike a chord with its readers who may be struggling through many of the same emotions and problems faced by fifteen-year-old Adam McCormick - minus the ghosts.

Adam is not the most popular guy in his high school. He does run on the school's track team but is otherwise pretty much a loner. He is close to his grandmother, who lives with the family, but his parents spend much of their time either ignoring or yelling at each and his older pothead of a brother enjoys ridiculing him at every opportunity. That's bad enough, but then things take a turn for the worse.

First his superstitious old grandmother dies in her sleep after her count of the number of crows around the house convinces her that bad things are in store for the family. Next his mother is permanently injured in a head-on collision. Believing that bad things happen in "threes," Adam thinks the cycle has run its course when the body of a classmate of his is found in a shallow grave. Little did he know that his real troubles were only beginning.

Jamie Marks, the computer geek who was murdered, had been even more of a loner than Adam but he is not ready to "cross over" and before long his ghost begins to appear to the girl who had accidentally discovered his grave. After Adam became intimately familiar with the former grave site himself, Jamie's ghost becomes his regular companion, encouraging Adam run away from home and even introducing him to another permanently-teenaged ghost that has been hanging around her old home place for several decades.

Has Adam been befriended by a ghost or is the ghost selfishly using him for purposes of its own? The two grow very close, and there are even hints of a budding homosexual relationship between them, but before long Adam loses his will to live, almost completely stops eating and drinking, and is perfectly willing to allow death to bring him fully into Jamie's world. As Jamie struggles to remain in the world he knew, Adam seems to be steadily slipping from that very world as the vampire-like Jamie, either accidentally or purposely, steals more and more of his life essence.

This gloomy book is filled with a long list of irritating and unsympathetic characters, especially the adults, but even all but one of the young people closest to Adam let him down or go out of their way to make his life miserable: his girlfriend, his brother and Jamie's ghost. This sets the tone for an ending that might leave some readers disappointed but, though it might not be the ending expected by most, realistically, is probably the best that Adam could have hoped for and it fits well with the rest of his story.

One for Sorrow did not leave me feeling particularly optimistic about life in small town America and, in fact, left me a bit down about the whole experience. But young adult readers might take a different message from Adam's ability to survive everything thrown at him in one dangerously tough year. I hope they do.

This book came to me as a gift from a friend, and it really was a gift, because it was exactly what I needed to read at the exact right time. Adam McCormick is a fifteen year old boy in rural Ohio, growing up in a family that is a mess. They're a mess because his father's work isn't steady, his mother has been paralyzed in an accident with a drunk driver who gets too cozy with the family afterward, and his older brother is casually cruel, medicating his disappointment with life in a place without much hope for the future by smoking pot. Adam is a good student and athlete, but not the popular sort. He's one of those guys with the goods but somehow remains removed from the daily lives of other teenagers. (Probably because he has all the messed up stuff going on at home.)

Then a boy in his class who he was just about to become friends with--a boy from an even more messed up family--is murdered, and Adam's life changes. He becomes friends and then lovers with the girl, Gracie, who found the boy's body. Both see the ghost of the murdered Jamie Marks. Both are looking for a connection with another person. They find each other through their relationships with the ghost, but not for long. Adam wants to escape his family problems, and he runs away. First to an abandoned farm where the ghost of a girl who murdered her parents in the 1930s still haunts the place. Then to Gracie's, where he lives in her closet. Problems ensue until he finds himself living in a lean-to in the woods, and finally an abandoned church in the nearby dying city of Youngstown, Ohio, where the ghost of Jamie continues to lead Adam to the land of the dead.

This novel has a great voice, page-turner quality, and is sympathetic toward a number of characters most people overlook. The poor, the misfits, the lost. The imagery is often unexpected and beautiful, and the characters are funny and sad at the same time.

It's a ghost story but it's not scary (there are a couple of horrifying moments in it, though). It's more a story about a quiet, lonely boy with problems who missed out on making a friend when he was just about to, and tries to extend that possibility beyond the grave.

I'm going to give my copy to someone who I think could use it. It's the sort of book that says, I understand what you're going through. Look at the messes I've gotten myself into! And you'll get through yours too.

There was quite a bit of hype about this book last year in the blogs that I frequently read, and of which I was dimly aware. I added it to my list of things to eventually read, and finally got around to it this year.

I have, honestly, mixed feelings about the book. I have rarely seen a writer who captures teenagers so very well (aside from Joss Whedon).I really enjoyed the quality of the prose. I am casting about in my mind for a good reviewing word to describe it, and can only come up with "elegant". The characters, both living and dead, are very well written. Francis has stuck in my mind since I finished the novel-- funny and sad, kind of an icon for refusing to let go when your tragedies are all that you own.

On the other hand, the pacing struck me as at least a little bit strange. The last section of the book collapsed in on itself like a telescope and a good deal of that section felt oddly false. I also wasn't always wild about how Barzak developed his concept of an afterlife, but that is more of a minor quibble.

I would certainly recommend the novel, with the minor reservations noted above. I liked it enough to circle back around and read some of the short stories which I was able to find online. He is a really talented writer, and I look forward to seeing more of his work.

(I have never written a review, so I apologize if this turns out to be rubbish, or if I ramble on too much)
This book surprised me. Maybe I just wasn't expecting much because the book has some awful reviews on here, but in my opinion, those reviews couldn't be more wrong. This is a really unique story about friendship, love, finding ones way, and doing whats right (and how sometimes that's saying goodbye) The characters were rich, believable, and easy to relate to. The story its self is beautiful and thought provoking. The only thing i can think of that people might have a problem with is that the story ends with out Jamie's murder being "solved." I found this to further my ability to relate to it though. Life and death are not black and white, sometimes things happen, and we never know why. I don't believe the author ever set out to have the book be about solving a murder. Its how that murder affected the people left behind, even those he didn't know very well.
Another reviewer wrote about the possible gay under tones. I say if you let that keep you from reading this truly incredible story, then your loss. The story centers around two males with an unusual friendship (ones dead, the other living) the two guys become very close and do share a bed often and even a small kiss at the end of the book, but to me it honestly didn't come off sexual at all. Our society places labels on things way to quickly, with out understanding them. especially the males in our society tend to be a little more uncomfortable when it comes to closeness with a member of the same sex. The two boys in this story have a very pure, close bond, and i found it to be beautiful.