Trapped by Michael Northrop
My rating: 3/5 cats
okay, so most little girls dream about being secret princesses or having a pony or having a ghost for a best friend or something. my childhood fantasies were always about being snowed in. (i may have entertained one or two princess fantasies, as well) and this is still my dream. living on the third floor of an apartment building pretty much guarantees this dream will never come true, but i still hope for it every single winter. the quiet of it all, the hunkered-down hibernation appeal, the having an excuse to do nothing except read and drink cocoa in my slanket and my unattractive but warm giant knit socks. looking out the window to see nothing but a giant wall of snow. this appeals to me way more than having a pony. even more than being snowed in with a pony.
and of course i recognize the negative sides to being snowed in, that there are dangers to pipes and roofs and the hypothermia and starvation and no mail, but i don’t think about those things. my perfect day is silence and books, and i never get enough of either of them.
so this should be the perfect book for me. let me say right here that the three stars cats i am giving to this book and the three stars cats i gave to don quixote are not the same three stars. with d.q., it just wasn’t something i could really get into, for the reasons i gave. with this one, it is exactly the kind of book i could get into, it just wasn’t very good. i mean, for other people. unless you are totally open and excited by the idea of getting snowed in, and you are reading this on a subway platform without gloves on a seriously freezing day in a new york february (it was sunny out – it looked warm – i was completely underdressed), unless you are in love with survivalist narratives to begin with, i don’t know if other people will dig this. i could not confidently recommend this to other people, unless i sensed a sympatico vibe.
parts of it are great.
the part near the end with the View Spoiler » and all was very good and the description of the cold seeping into his thighs and his injuries was excellent and gripping and everything one could have hoped for.
but then.
View Spoiler »but to backtrack.
so you got seven kids and a teacher trapped in a school during this kickass nor’easter dumping something like 18 feet of snow and not stopping for anything. and it’s a total john hughes cast: the jock and the jockette, the tough guy, the slightly-less-tough but clever military enthusiast, the loner, etc…the cellphones aren’t working and no one knows they are there…trapped… i really wish they would have smoked some pot and done a musical number through the library.
but it was not to be. because this book had one of the same problems as the dead and the gone in terms of adhering to social norms in times of societal breakdown. now, it is true that i am a cute little fascist and i love rules and regimentation but even i know that in certain situations, the rules just don’t apply and there is no time for fanciness or squeamishness or fear of reprisal.
why on earth would a teenager concern himself with the fear that he would get kicked off the basketball team for breaking into the cafeteria for food when they are snowed in?? this is not random uncontrolled vandalism, this is survival. i know teens are illogical, but surely they can differentiate between wantonly breaking display cases and breaking a lock in order to eat food to survive? extenuating circumstances?? don’t kids watch movies?? i read a lot of teen survival books and it always burns me up when kids are impractical. where are the kids who shoot each other for sneakers with no provocation?? i want to hear their survival stories – i know they wouldn’t feel scared about grabbing some pudding from the caf.
i thought video games were supposed to be teaching our children to think outside the box, but they were having difficulties working out a bathroom situation.
maybe i am not being fair, but i have high expectations for teenagers from new england. we are the resourceful ones; where is your pilgrim spirit?? it may just be a story of slow realization because eventually, they work things out and come up with clever ideas but then the storm rallies – it is a pretty good, tense story of man vs. nature and all that.
but then, and this is the reason for only three stars cats:
yeah, i’d read that.
