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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Three years in the life,
By
This review is from: Rats Saw God (Paperback)
What has caused the descent of Steve York, verbally gifted high school student, once a straight A student, now an apathetic drug user?A few months before graduation, Steve's guidance counselor intervenes, arranging for Steve to complete a failing English credit by composing a 100 page story. Steve decides to write about his sophomore and junior year of high school, when he became involved with a group of non-conformists and formed the Grace Order of Dadaists (GOD) club. Also during that time, Steve met his first love and experienced the worst kind of heartbreak. As Steve relates the sometimes wonderful, sometimes painful story of those years, he alternates with commentary on his senior year in San Diego: his academic recovery, fueled in part by a new love interest, and his reconciliation of long time tension with his father, a famous astronaut. The novel's structure highlights the downward trajectory of Steve's Houston years, contrasted with the upward swing of his year in San Diego. Thomas tells Steve's story with a mix of clever humor, engrossing early-90s trivia, and non-sentimental, realistic teenage emotions. Highly recommended.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
In search for meaning,
By
This review is from: Rats Saw God (Hardcover)
I was assigned this novel for a master's class in teaching the adolescent learner. Thomas writes from the true perspective of a teenager in search of a meaning in his life when things seem hopeless and lost. Steve York displays all the characteristics of a high schooler looking for his identity. Although he protrays himself as a cynic and misfit, York represents all teenagers who simply seek acceptance and a place to fit in. York experiences the highs and lows, including his first love and the battle of appeasing a disappointed father.Through writing, York finds that meaning and is able to mend fences and realize that only you can truly choose the right path for yourself. Steve eventually does that, makes up with his father and uses his intellect for construction and not destruction. This is a solid YA novel that many teenagers should be able to associate with.
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Review of Rats Saw God,
By Jordan Enyeart (North Bend, OR United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Rats Saw God (Paperback)
The way that this book is written, you can't really say that you are going to stop "at the end of this chapter." There are no actual chapters. Taking place in two different years- one of which is the present time of the book, and one the essay that the main character is writing- it goes back and forth, sometimes with as little as two paragraphs in a section.The book is mainly about Steve York, a San Diego senior in high school, who is failing, bummed out about life, and at the beginning he has a constant high. It goes back and forth between him in the present, and him as a sophomore student in Houston, Texas, who is popular at school, and is liked by everyone, who has a great girlfriend, and a lot of close friends- the only bad thing about his life, is that he lives with his father, Alan York, who is a world famous astronaut. Steve almost always calls his father "the astronaut". A no-nonsense counselor, Mr. Demouy, tells him that if he writes a hundred page paper on the topic of his choice, that he can graduate from high school, and get his missing English credit. Through out the book, Demouy and Steve become close. The book takes place in two different times and places, the late eighties, in Houston, Texas, and about nineteen ninety, in San Diego, California. In Texas, Steve lives in a suburb, in a large house, that has boxes that were never unpacked scattered through out it. And in San Diego, he lives with his mother- who is never home, for she travels with her husband (a pilot) almost all the time- and his sister, who turns out to be a major part of the story. Steve hates it at his dad's house, and doesn't care- mainly because he is (or was) high all the time- about where he lives in San Diego. I loved this book, but it isn't for everyone. With the many sexual and drug innuendos, some people wouldn't be able to handle it. The book goes by quite fast, I read it in two days, and I'm not the best of readers. It is definitely written for teenagers in mind, although some adults may like it. I learned many lessons from the book. One of which is that for two people to truly have a connection, words don't have to be a major thing in their relationship. As Steve finds out, a person who you might say a few words to on an occasional basis, and who your conversations never last more than a few sentences, may have one of the biggest connections to you out of any one in the world. Sometimes words aren't needed to have a connection. The author developed the plot very well, although not in the most conventional of ways. The characters were also developed very well. I felt as though I truly knew Steve and his family. The situation is something that could definitely happen in the real world. The book mixes humor, romance, life learned lessons, and serious subject matter all into one big web that somehow all fits together perfectly. I highly recommend every one to read it.
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