'Rabbit Hole' narrator

Sorry for taking so long on this. You've probably forgotten the book by this point, so this is more to get something on the record. I found it interesting, maybe not so much as others who raved about it, though. I was mainly interested in checking out the child narrator, after having read our last YA pick written from a teen's point of view and having discussed the issues of an adult writing for teens in a teen voice and how realistic that really is. This is an adult writing in a child's voice for an adult audience, which generally seems more plausible to me, maybe because the writer and reader at least are on the same maturity level. It's one adult communicating with another, even if the medium (or subject matter) is a kid. The book won a lot of praise for its realistic boy narrator. Would you agree with that assessment? Or is this enterprise of creating a sustained narrative in a little child's voice really asking too much of a reader's suspension of disbelief? Is it manipulative somehow? It seemed to me that the narrator mostly sounded like a precocious child might actually sound but that the narrative choices —— including this detail but not that detail, etc. —— were inescapably adult. I think adults can recognize the charm of children's speech and perspective but I'm not sure they can convincingly replicate it over the long haul. Still, I appreciated the glimpse into how the drug-lord underworld might appear to a kid who didn't know anything different.

Next pick: "Down the Rabbit Hole"

This is a short Mexican novel lauded for the realism of its 7-year-old narrator. Thought it would be an interesting read after our discussion about the Young Adult perspective.

'There's always the phone'

I thought some of the Liars' rebellion stemmed from deep-down awareness that they would let go of each other once they were separated, best of intentions nonwithstanding. Cady mentioned that in a few ways: That they'd stay connected, tagging photos in September, and then that would die out, or a few times it was "there's always the phone." The adults really only threatened their immediate proximity. They would let themselves down after that.

Writing style

What did you think of the writing? We had the first-person, unreliable narrator; literary references and fairy tale interludes; dramatic metaphor; sentences like: "Johnny, he is bounce, effort, and snark. Mirren, she is sugar, curiosity, and rain." Clever, or too much?

The twist

Did you see it coming? Did you like the ghost element, or find it annoying? Did it work with the rest of the story?

We Were Liars

What did you think? Enjoyable, cheesy? CL, you're the expert on YA literature -- how do you think "We Were Liars" holds up in the genre?

Next pick

Thought this would be fun: "We Were Liars" by E. Lockhart