Charm & Strange

Il m'a manqué un petit quelque chose indéfinissable pour être totalement charmé par ce roman qui nous plonge dans deux époques différentes de la pré-adolescence et de l'adolescence d'un garçon tourmenté par des événements de son passé. Je ne sais pas si les jeunes lecteurs auxquels s'adresse prioritairement ce roman sont plus surpris que moi par la révélation finale, mais je dois avouer l'avoir vue arriver dès le premier tiers du récit. Un peu dommage, même si le roman reste agréable à lire malgré des personnages stéréotypés et pas forcément très attachants.

I went into this not knowing at all what to expect. There was a lot of good hype about it, but not much elaboration on what it was about. I read an excerpt when I was bored at work one day and ho-ly shit within a paragraph I knew I needed to read this and read it now.

This book hurts. I think the last time a story made me feel this way after I watched Shame. It's that I-don't-know-what-to-do-with-my-life-until-this-passes-so-I'm-just-going-sit-here-and-stare-into-space kind of pain. I thought I knew what I was reading for a while, until Keuhn finally reveals the root of Win's delusion, and god it hurts. I couldn't focus on anything for the rest of the day. It was like a bomb went off in my head.

Charm & Strange is about predator and prey. It's about the inhumanity in man that feeds on the weak, and the animal in each of us that helps us survive. I can't help but draw a connection to Teeth, which is also about victimization, people that show their animal in their bodies, and those that show it in their actions. At one point, Win says “I am savage. I endured.” I believe Moskowitz's fishboy would probably say something similar.

Yeah, if you understand all the connections I've made to other works, and what they all have in common, then you can probably guess what this book is actually about. Sorry for the spoiler, I guess, but you could use the warning.

I didn't even realize until I went to pick it up from the library that it would be on the “realistic fiction” shelf. It's a book about a painfully real subject, but its also about fantasy. The fantasy that exists between trauma and recovery. The stories and mythology we build to make sense of the world. The system of meaning, as we find out its called. Win Winters is raised in a tiny world where what is wanted is taken, that bodies belong to anyone who wishes to take power over them, and so he has to be a monster if he is to survive. He believes he can let no one in lest he hurts them the way he was once hurt. He expects the change to come with the full moon, like a beast under his skin. If only things were that simple. If only beasts did terrible things.

I loved the intimacy between Win and Lex, two characters that have an almost dudebro conflict at first, until you realized the only reason why they're being shitty to each other is because they saw each other at their most vulnerable. They hate each other for it, but they're sewn together as a result. Jordan comes in as a catalyst. Win responds to her vulnerability, her naivete not as a predator, but as a protector. They expose his nature, his real animal, and its not something that destroys, but fights.

I can't not recommend this book, as hard as it is. It will make you angry, it will disgust you, it make you want to claw the paint off walls. But I don't know anyone who shouldn't read it.

3.5 stars. It borders on 4, but not quite, because some of the characters developed relationships too fast, or the element of time seemed to skip forward too much. A little spoilery. Not too much.

That being said. Wow. I was mightily impressed. Ms Kuehn writes beautifully. She never condescends to her readers. There is depth and darkness in this novel.

Win is a prep school boy in VT with a troubled past. He hides his true name to all but one person, who has since seemed to become his antagonist (and this character gets muddled for me). He and his siblings were sexually abused as children by their horrible father, and he creates an alternate reality in which they are all possess wolves inside of them. So werewolves become his means of explaining to himself everything that happened.

You deduce quickly that abuse is happening. But the story takes an even darker turn toward the end, when you realize what else Win has survived.

I would most certainly read Ms Kuehn again. She has a mature style. It's almost like literary fiction because it contains beautiful sentences and meaning, but it's better than most litfic. In fact, I think I will look her up in my local library now.