The Beast, Walter Dean Myers, 8/50
The Beast, Walter Dean Myers, 8/50. This is a very careful, balanced novel - the metaphor throughout is that of the labyrinth, with the beast at its heart, but the danger is not so much the monster itself as the ever-present possibility of losing your way. Anthony Witherspoon comes back to Harlem after his first term at a Connecticut prep school, to find new gaps between himself and his friends there; of most concern is his girlfriend Gabi, who has become distant from both Spoon and the Gabi he remembers.
It would have been easy to tell this story as a standard problem novel and flatten the characters out to fit; what it is instead is a story not just about individuals with problems, but about the different communities they inhabit, and how some people manage to move between them, while others are lost. Nicely done.
It would have been easy to tell this story as a standard problem novel and flatten the characters out to fit; what it is instead is a story not just about individuals with problems, but about the different communities they inhabit, and how some people manage to move between them, while others are lost. Nicely done.