Customer Reviews

The Patterns of Paper Monsters

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

 

 

I started to underline the funny lines to pull out for quotes, but I had to stop, because I was underlining the whole book.

Patterns is a coming of age novel about a seventeen-year-old boy from the wrong part of Northern Virginia. His father abandoned him early in life, his mother is an infantile alcoholic, and his stepfather is a chronically unemployed wife beater. All the present action takes place in a juvenile detention center, where Jacob is being held for attempted armed robbery of a convenience store. Pretty grim stuff. But Rathbone manages a tricky feat: she makes the book a delight to read, a rollicking adventure, a hilarious romp through the twisted mind of a teenager with a sharp wit and enough attitude and energy to power a whole novel.

The book is framed as journal entries Jacob writes every evening, and the action covers the last few months of Jacob's time as a prisoner, ending with a short narrative of what happens to him after he gets out. It's written in the first person and present tense, which gives it an immediacy that pulls the reader in. Jacob uses a lot of sensory information, which makes us feel like we are in the room with him.

As with most first person narratives, the driving force of this book is the voice. It's defiant and judgmental of people and things that don't seem authentic, sincere, or fair. It's confessional, unrepentant, sarcastic, clever, and honest. It is never self-indulgent or self-pitying. Because of Jacob's honesty and perceptiveness, he gains our sympathy (also, because the story is in the first person). Because he is a nonconformist bent on seeing the world in his own way, he allows himself a lot of word play and inventiveness, which makes his journal entries surprising, refreshing, and very funny.

Despite the disparate tastes of our book club, this out-of-left-field pick received unanimous critical acclaim from our living room skeptics.
Those of us with teenaged boys found the verbally precocious, yet emotionally immature voice of the protagonist to be spot on. The contrast of the spare, stark plot with the attention to minute trivial detail seemed a subtle metaphor for the simple and excruciatingly dull existence of an intelligent kid consigned to a life in the confines of a juvenile detention center. The author does not dust sugar on the grim situation, yet gives us Jacob's quirky inner dialogue to lighten what could have been a hopeless tale. And his tentative attempts at moving toward adulthood are very touching.
This opener gives me high hopes for what comes next.
And yes, I know I'm from Charlottesville, but no, I don't personally know the author, so I don't have any skin in this game. I just liked the book.

It's a good book. Parts are funny, parts are sad, there's a resolution (of sorts). The author is stunningly amazing at writing the mind of a sarcastic 17-year-old in juvie. I liked it.

What a remarkably good debut novel(la). The story is set at a juvenile detention center in Northern Virginia, and is narrated in the voice of Jacob, a smart fifteen year old inmate from a screwed up family. Over the course of the book, Jacob falls for a girl who is also an inmate, and gets tangled up in the plans of a sociopathic rich boy inmate. The narrative voice is amazing, often very funny and profane, and Jacob grows in subtle, believable ways. A really good book and a very fast read.

Yes I enjoyed this novel.

Mostly I enjoyed the writing style of Emma Rathbone.


She is a very talented and gifted writer.

Every page is chalked full of amazingly
creative, spunky and brillant metaphors.

Her ability to write dialogue is so
evident. She has the rare ability to gather the essence of a situation and de-limit
her mind to create hilarious and satrical spin-offs.

I look forward to hearing her unique writing voice in the future.

Hmmm..I really liked the tone in this book. I enjoyed the humor and Jacob's views on things. I also liked how descriptive Rathbone is of the juvenile center. However, there were many points where I almost fell asleep. I didn't really get into it and felt that mostly it was lacking in plot.