I can’t remember where I first saw Deadville mentioned. I put it on my wish list and more or less forgot about it. Ron Koertge does not come up often in my blog reading, so nothing kept him in the forefront of my mind. Last week I picked his book off the wish list to check out from the library. It’s really good. Mostly believable teens. Great treatment of death and illness. And good music thrown in to boot.
Ryan is a stoner. Listens to music all the time. I kind of want to make a list of all the music listed in the book, cause I’m betting that most of it I would like. I digress though. One of Ryan’s schoolmates, Charlotte, is thrown from a horse and is in a coma in the hospital. Charlotte was part of the popular crowd. Ryan isn’t in her circle. But he decides to visit her in the hospital anyway.
It quickly becomes clear that Ryan has a few demons of his own. While the jacket blurb comes right out and says that Ryan’s sister Molly had cancer, in the story it’s revealed gradually. It broke him, watching his sister ill. Rather than deal with it, he started getting high before going to the hospital to visit. Now he gets high all the time and squabbles with his parents, though they aren’t particularly dysfunctional. Just neurotic.
Back to Charlotte. His first visit is straight, but he lights up immediately after leaving the hospital. He’s drawn back, thinking about how early on his sister Molly had lots of visitors but fewer as the days continued. Charlotte seems to have the same experience as she lays asleep
; even her boyfriend only visits once. Her family is there frequently and regularly. Ryan doesn’t develop much of a relationship with them, but he does with Betty, one of Charlotte’s volleyball teammates.
Koertge handles the subject matter incredibly well. Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t detect one false note about how anyone handled death or serious injury. Particularly Ryan. He never really liked Charlotte. Still doesn’t. But he’s drawn to her in a totally believable way and wants her to get well. (I’ve had my own similar experiences.)
The one thing that felt a bit false to me was that every teen seems pretty psychologically aware. Some obviously weren’t as academically gifted. But they all seemed to know themselves in a way that teens I’ve worked with aren’t. Real life teens are certainly capable of it, and they show great skill in it sometimes. But they don’t consistently take steps back from their own situations and see them as outsiders would. The feel in this book is that they do.
Definitely recommended reading, that’ll fit the attention span for anyone.
Other blogged reviews:
- Andy Wolverton (this might be where I first saw the book…)
- Knight Reader
- Thumbs Up 2009
Title: Deadville
Author: Ron Koertge
Imprint / publisher: Candlewick
Format: Hardcover
Length: 212 p.
Publication date: October 2008
ISBN-13: 978-0-7636-3580-0
Subject: Death — Fiction
Subject: Grief — Fiction
Subject: Dead — Fiction
LC classification: PZ7.K81825 De 2008
