Simon Says

I've been reading this YA book called Simon Says for a little while now, a little to long. I have a hard time reading more than 20-30 pages at a time. The author repeats herself frequently, just with synonyms to make it seem fresh, but really the main character Charlie has told me a thousand times that no one understands his paintings. I get that this is part of the premise of the whole book and the crux of why the other main character ends up dead, but really, I think after the second time I really understood. When Charlie's mom didn't want him to show the paintings to other people because they might be scared...when his first "girlfriend" was shocked by them and then made fun of them...when all of his art teachers hated them...and on and on. I get it. Move on. Tell me something else about Charlie.

He's not a flat character by any means. And his motives are clear. I like that the whole reason he wanted to go to the arts high school was to meet Graeme Brant who wrote a YA book that Charlie read and revered. That was interesting. But I want more of that. Charlie gets close to new revelations and then he's sucked back into no-one-likes-me and no-one-can-see-my-paintings.

Graeme also is not very interesting. Charlie discovers that despite the fact that Graeme has written a masterpiece of fiction which depicts the flaws of human kind--mainly how everyone does what everyone else expects them to do or wants them to do/everyone follows that status quo--Graeme actually is a victim of this flaw as well. Graeme is the worst victim of following others. In fact, Charlie draws him surrounded by mirrors and casting no reflection. But Graeme's journal entries (luckily only a fourth of the book) are trite and overly telling and completely transparant. The only interesting thing Graeme writes is his suicide note to Charlie.

Anyway, I've been working on this book for weeks now and still have 50 pages left. It's only 280. I haven't read nearly enough this summer and school starts in a week. I never have time to read during the school year. Oh, the plans I had for the summer months...