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Mar. 18th, 2008 11:03 pmRepossessed, by A.M. Jenkins, was a finalist in the 2007 Cybils - in the YA SF&F division, and a few of the reviews I saw of it then made me pretty sure I'd like it, though there's many a slip and all other such clichés of the sort. But I don't know if I'd have been quite as caught up with thinking and re-thinking it, and arguing out what made me think it was so very good, had it not somehow got entangled in my mind with the whole 'Grow Up', says Roger (Read him!) kerfuffle that blew up a little bit ago. I didn't bother to say anything about that at the time, because it was so adequately addressed by Liz B, Mother Reader and Robin Brande, among many others, I've no doubt.
But anyway, the book. If you combined a hefty dash of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (or at least, the book as it is in my memory) with the G.M. Hopkins poem "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day", a bit of Pullman's Tyranny of Heaven take on matters *without* any of his arrogant They Shall Not Preach preaching, and a lot of the best of YA-with-teen-boy-protagonists sharp humour, -- Repossessed. Or not, but I certainly found myself thinking of all those things both during and after reading it.
I wouldn't have a hope of finding it now, but I was thinking about![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sartorias writing recently that humanity was in a pretty adolescent state overall, and maybe needing play to help us grow up, and in that sense, I might almost buy Roger's command to those of us who read YA for purely recreational purposes to grow up. Because who wants to stop growing up, just because we're old enough to - oh, head up important professional journals, and tell people what to think about what others read or don't read? Not I. And reading and thinking about this (YA - you got that?) book was play of a most wonderful sort.
But anyway, the book. If you combined a hefty dash of C.S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters (or at least, the book as it is in my memory) with the G.M. Hopkins poem "I Wake and Feel the Fell of Dark, Not Day", a bit of Pullman's Tyranny of Heaven take on matters *without* any of his arrogant They Shall Not Preach preaching, and a lot of the best of YA-with-teen-boy-protagonists sharp humour, -- Repossessed. Or not, but I certainly found myself thinking of all those things both during and after reading it.
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I wouldn't have a hope of finding it now, but I was thinking about
sartorias writing recently that humanity was in a pretty adolescent state overall, and maybe needing play to help us grow up, and in that sense, I might almost buy Roger's command to those of us who read YA for purely recreational purposes to grow up. Because who wants to stop growing up, just because we're old enough to - oh, head up important professional journals, and tell people what to think about what others read or don't read? Not I. And reading and thinking about this (YA - you got that?) book was play of a most wonderful sort.
