Catherine Mavrikakis

roman

Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson

Caitlin Berger

Soooooooo I had to read this book for French class, and it was okay. Personally I'm not totally into books that are just one long reminiscence, without much action. I like when there is a plot and there is some development and a problem of sorts that needs to be resolved.

It was interesting that each character's narration was different, especially how God was telling the part of Ray Ryan. 

*****SPOILERS AHEAD**********

What I found completely uncalled for, or what took me by surprise, was how literally all four characters died. Like...when Sydney gets shot...I was shocked! I totally didn't see that coming because, um, NOTHING was happening in the story up until then :P Like randomly he just dies, it just felt weird. And then Pearl presumably overdoses and presumably dies. I mean it doesn't say it point blank but you can pretty much guess that's what happens. Again, totally shocking and not expected, but not even in a good way. And then God says that Ray randomly dies in his sleep. At this point I seriously like banged my book down and was like OKAY WHAT THE HELL. What the heck does this have to do with the story, I don't understand why all the characters die?!?! Like am I just too stupid to get the message, or?? And obviously Smokey dies, because he was sentenced to the death penalty. So that was the only expected death.

Something that also pissed me off was how in the last chapter, when it's Smokey talking, the author chose not to really talk about why Smokey committed those murders. She alludes to the fact that his sister wondered why he did it, but that's about it. I don't see how you can make a book that discusses the death penalty, but not go into why people commit murders in the first place. Like what, he just randomly decided to kill a white family because he maybe suffered racism? I don't understand where it came from and I felt like there was no closure to his story. How can you properly defend or not defend the death penalty when you can't even figure out why this guy murdered that family?! 

Anyways. The story isn't as bad as I am currently making it sound, but yeah, there were some weird writing things. If you feel like reading this, go ahead, but I wouldn't put it on my "must read" list.

Les derniers jours de Smokey Nelson roman

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