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The Monster Variations, by Daniel Kraus
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Someone is killing boys in a small town. The weapon is a truck and the only protection is a curfew enacted to keep kids off the streets. But it's summer, and that alone is worth the risk for James, Willie, and Reggie.
- Sales Rank: #1304008 in Books
- Published on: 2012-10-23
- Released on: 2012-10-23
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.31" h x .56" w x 5.50" l, .50 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 256 pages
Review
"The Monster Variations has shades of A Separate Peace, Lord of the Flies, and To Kill a Mockingbird, but is utterly unique from the very first line."
--JOSHUA FERRIS, Then We Came to the End
"Beneath the terror and the thrills, there is truth in this haunting tale. It pierced my heart straight through."
--LAUREN MYRACLE, ttyl and Bliss
About the Author
DANIEL KRAUS is a writer, editor, and filmmaker. He lives with his wife in Chicago.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Five more minutes and I'm gone.
This was all James was thinking as he muscled the wheel left and pulled the car across yellow lines, pocked cement, a sleet of gravel and dust. Five minutes and a tank of gas and he would be on the road--no more stops until he saw the university rise from the hills. Then these towns, all of them, would be behind him and his new life would begin. He might never come back.
But first, fuel. James was just thirty minutes outside of town, in an even smaller township made up of little more than one sleepy tavern, a scattering of silos reaching up from competing cornfields, and a single derelict gas station contaminating the leafy countryside. There had been filling stations back in his hometown, three of them, but he had wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible. James aimed his vehicle at the fuel pump. These small towns, he thought, tasting rust in the air and feeling the sting of burnt oil in his nostrils. Goodbye to them forever.
The tassel from his graduation cap swung from his rearview mirror, and as he rolled the car up next to the pump, it bounced and twirled, striking out the sunlight, then blinding him with it, as it had been doing since he had set out, as it had been doing ever since graduation. His friends hung their tassels from their rearviews, so he did as well, but all summer it had been a constant, dangling annoyance that would not quit reminding him of the town he was leaving and the bright future that everyone kept assuring him was waiting for him just up the road, just a few short hours away.
James struck the tassel with the back of his hand. It exploded into a pom-pom as cheery as the crowd of parents that had applauded when he had given his class's graduation speech two months ago. He'd taken his diploma on that stage and shaken the hand of a school superintendent he had never met before but who nonetheless gripped his palm and purred through clamped teeth, "We're all proud of you, son. Go get 'em up at State." James had nodded obediently and now regretted it. How much longer would he have to be obedient? How many more times would he do what his mother, his teachers, his classmates told him to do? Not much longer, he thought, glaring at the tassel. Five more minutes and I'm gone.
Getting out of town had been a nightmare. His parents, divorced but living just ten blocks from one another, had seen to that. After all the years of waiting, and after all he had been through, James thought getting to college would be as easy and as pleasant as getting into his car and driving there. He was wrong. It involved one hundred hours of strategy, toil, negation, inspiration. To his parents, the end of the world was tied up with one question: which of them would get to accompany James on the trip? His father, a hand clutching at what was left of his hair, explained slowly to his mother that James was a young man, moving into a dormitory full of other young men, and it was against nature to be brought into such a world by a woman. James winced--his father walked right into that one.
"Who brought him into this world in the first place?" his mother replied, her bottom teeth fretting against the old scar that slanted through the pink of her upper lip. "I've raised him," she said, keeping her voice as steady as she could. "Five years, me alone, in this house, cooking his food and hanging his laundry, and with whose help? No one's. And I didn't do it so I could pass him off to you like a football, so you could score the touchdown."
It was an apt comparison. James felt battered by these endless negotiations. But what else was life? You be quiet, you get a cookie. Sit still for church and we'll go out for burgers. As far as he could tell, only the stakes changed with age. So he sat calmly as they argued--he even smiled on occasion--while envisioning for the both of them a thousand gruesome deaths: hacksaws, stranglings, meat grinders, escapee elephants. The violence of these images used to surprise and shame him. Both feelings, he had discovered, wore off.
His father believed that life was math, ratios, fractions, all things at which he excelled, so his arguments towered over those of James's mother; they were masterpieces of logic more convoluted than the advanced-placement calculus tests James had recently aced. Given enough time, his father could prove that mankind descended from calico cats or that the West had won the Civil War. Yet this was one campaign he could not win. His ex-wife, James's mother, had one single, unassailable point, which she repeated with myopic persistence: "It's not fair."
What they really wanted was to have the final word, the opportunity to impart some divine piece of parental wisdom that would trump all that came before it. But if there actually was wisdom to impart, thought James, why had they both waited this long to hand it over? And if they were so wise, then why couldn't they come up with a way for the three of them to get along?
Revenge fantasies could get him only so far. It was time for action. James considered his options and just one made sense: he needed a clean break from the people and memories that surrounded him. So, one week before leaving, James woke up early, called his girlfriend, Clara, and dumped her. He started to feel guilty; he refocused and didn't back down. She cried and James timed it: ten minutes, not bad. For the past several months she'd been a nice enough girlfriend, but he'd really only miss their physical contact, and knew that beneath the perfunctory tears she felt the same. Clara went to a different school, as had his previous girlfriend, Jennifer, and the thing he liked best about the arrangement was that they were ignorant of his anesthetized daily life: the smiling boy scoring straight A's in a world without risk or danger. With Jennifer and Clara he had savored the intoxicants of nastiness, flavors he hadn't sampled since he was twelve. He could treat these girls badly, and had, because there was no social consequence at home or in school. It was wrong, he knew that, but he was not willing to give more of his heart than was necessary to keep a girl's interest--his heart, in fact, seemed lost somewhere in the past. At college no one would know him and he hoped this would further facilitate recklessness. Perhaps the imaginary pain he inflicted on everyone would no longer be necessary because there would be real pain, his included, instead of this numbness that stole his life's every second.
From the Hardcover edition.
Most helpful customer reviews
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful.
Well written, Great story
By V. Davis
Daniel Kraus conveys this story mostly "seen through the eyes" of 12 year old boys. Delivered are; vigorous imaginations, mysteries, drama, adventure...blood, sweat & tears...guts & glory...guts & gory grit...ins & outs...ups & downs...all laced with poetic imagery to "fan the fire"...and lets not forget how the various lives of the "adults" around them contributed to the whole saga.
The well written time line weaves a bit back and forth to include the ever widening circle of people and circumstances.
This tale starts in "the now" with a somewhat older James. In this time frame, James runs into Reggie, which begs the story to go back to their 12th year. The majority of the pages are dedicated to that fateful year. Then there is a building and winding back up to the present...and conclusion of the book.
I would love to go into the rich story line, but, really I don't want to diminish the readers' own enjoyment of discovery.
We, the readers, are voyeurs...we witness, we feel, we even squirm here and there...we certainly wonder what is going to happen or be revealed next.
It is a fine and dramatically entertaining study of the human psyche.
Honestly, I could not put the book down...until its very fine "ending".
PS. this book is certainly a great read for adults. And, I would especially give it to any adult who has "lost touch" with their youth.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Not scary, but definitely enjoyabe
By Lindsey Miller
Ok, so first of all, this book sells itself the completely wrong way. I understand that there are some potentially interesting angles that can create buzz amongst readers if you take the `boys are mysteriously' dying pieces and blow them out of proportion. Given the back cover, I was truly expecting I Know What You Did Last Summer, or Scream, but what I got was more like Hearts In Atlantis, and even that movie was scarier than this book. For those of you looking for Goosebumps, this is not your book.
However, in my opinion, the text is much better. I wasn't looking forward to a YA book version of a bad horror flick, so I was pleasantly surprised to find that this novel isn't anything at all like that. It's a story about growing up, making mistakes, and working through difficult circumstances given the various pressures around you. Kraus's narrative voice is perfect for the three main characters. Each is unique and each has a different home life that causes tension and struggles that arise as a result.
Honestly, I love coming of age novels because they hearken to a simpler time in all of us when we're exploring everything life is beginning to offer as we awaken into our teenage selves--weird hormones, friendships forming and dissolving, and the realization that our parents are normal people with problems of their own. I don't think there are enough good books like this one, and I recommend this to boys, ages 10 - 13.
[...]
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
Brilliant
By Karen Keyte
Whoever wrote the synopsis that appears on the jacket flap of this book should be ashamed of him or herself. By making it appear as if The Monster Variations is a horror thriller, the unknown blurbster has done both the potential reader and the book's brilliant author, Daniel Kraus, a great disservice. The Monster Variations is a visceral tale of twelve-year-old boys on the cusp of manhood. The story is riveting, the imagery remarkable ("his heart scraped itself across the sharp blades of his ribs" ) and the prose luminous.
James Wahl is desperately eager to leave his hometown, his parents, and his childhood behind. Making his getaway to college, James stops at a hole-in-the-wall town for gas and comes face to face with the past he can't outrun. Reggie Fielder was once one of James' best friends and during their twelfth summer they shared adventures and horrors that profoundly changed the young men they would become.
One week into that long ago summer vacation a boy named Greg Johnson is killed in a hit and run. The grown-ups are in an uproar, convinced that a deliberate killer is targeting the town's boys and a curfew is soon declared. This is all particularly troubling for best friends James, Reggie and Willie. Clearly an 8 pm curfew will curtail their summer plans and it won't really protect them. They know this for a fact because Willie was the mad driver's first victim and the hit-and-run that cost him his left arm occurred much earlier in the evening than 8. The boys decide that no curfew is going to mess up their long, glorious summer and when the need arises they won't hesitate to ignore it.
As the weeks go by and the killer is not caught, the boys plan a series of meaningful outings that will test their courage and their friendship. With each passing summer day, it becomes clear that growing up means changing and sometimes even growing apart, but the people who share your transition from childhood to adolescence are the ones who leave the biggest marks on your soul.
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Do yourself a favor: skip the jacket flap and sink your teeth directly into this wonderful book.
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