Helpful Score: 3
Just finished this book and can finally see what the fuss was about.
I'd seen the movie and knew the plot and was even a bit put off by the first chapter. The narrator, Ponyboy, had a voice that initially felt unrealistic for a 14 year old boy. Particularly one coming of age in the early to mid 60's. However, once past the early descriptions of everyone, the dissonance pretty much disappeared and the final chapters make up for all of the disparity and even explain it to a degree.
There is a brilliantly conflicted duality to Ponyboy. We get indications of it in his enjoyment of sunsets and reading but its only toward the end when we see him breaking a bottle to threaten some socs then after they leave picking up the glass so no one gets a flat tire, that we really see just how different the two natures that are vying for his soul truly are.
The early chapters all build to this denouement but they had more of the feel of a dystopian novel translated to a 50's youth gang vernacular. If I'd been asked to characterize the book half way through I'd have grouped it with The Cross and the Switchblade and West Side Story and such stories.
But the family dynamic that surfaces in the last few chapters makes it much more than that. This book truly deserves the popularity that its attained.
I'd seen the movie and knew the plot and was even a bit put off by the first chapter. The narrator, Ponyboy, had a voice that initially felt unrealistic for a 14 year old boy. Particularly one coming of age in the early to mid 60's. However, once past the early descriptions of everyone, the dissonance pretty much disappeared and the final chapters make up for all of the disparity and even explain it to a degree.
There is a brilliantly conflicted duality to Ponyboy. We get indications of it in his enjoyment of sunsets and reading but its only toward the end when we see him breaking a bottle to threaten some socs then after they leave picking up the glass so no one gets a flat tire, that we really see just how different the two natures that are vying for his soul truly are.
The early chapters all build to this denouement but they had more of the feel of a dystopian novel translated to a 50's youth gang vernacular. If I'd been asked to characterize the book half way through I'd have grouped it with The Cross and the Switchblade and West Side Story and such stories.
But the family dynamic that surfaces in the last few chapters makes it much more than that. This book truly deserves the popularity that its attained.
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