Playlist for the Dead
Ratings15
Average rating3
Part mystery, part love story, and part coming-of-age tale in the vein of The Perks of Being a Wallflower and The Spectacular Now. There was a party. There was a fight. The next morning, Sam's best friend, Hayden, was dead. And all he left Sam was a playlist of songs and a suicide note: For Sam—listen and you'll understand. To figure out what happened, Sam has to rely on the playlist and his own memory. But the more he listens, the more he realizes that his memory isn't as reliable as he thought. And it might only be by taking out his earbuds and opening his eyes to the people around him that he'll finally be able to piece together his best friend's story. And maybe have a chance to change his own. Playlist for the Dead is an honest and gut-wrenching first novel about loss, rage, what it feels like to outgrow a friendship that's always defined you—and the struggle to redefine yourself. But above all, it's about finding hope when hope seems like the hardest thing to find.
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Playlist for the dead n'est certainement pas le livre le plus joyeux que j'ai lu dernièrement, mais il a le mérite d'être vraiment un livre excellent tant sur le suicide (contrairement à My heart and other blackholes ou Falling into places) et sur le harcèlement scolaire (il va cependant moins loin que Wonder qui reste un coup de coeur). La perte d'un être cher est décrite de façon brutale, sans précaution, et viens frapper le lecteur de plein fouet, l'amenant assez rapidement à l'enterrement et son cortège de discours et de situations difficiles. On s'attache doucement à Sam, alors qu'il tente de comprendre ce qui a poussé son meilleur ami à s'ôter la vie, et qu'il gère doucement sa culpabilité.
Si les chansons apparaissent toujours en tête de chapitre, on perd au fur et à mesure le rapport avec elles durant le livre pour, vers la moitié, ne plus y faire trop attention. Cependant l'histoire est extrêmement prenante et arrive à capter totalement l'attention (traduction : merde il est déjà 2 heures du matin oO).
On découvre avec Sam le monde et les gens qui l'entourent, les secrets de chacuns, les faux semblants, ... Pour au final se rendre compte que tout n'est pas aussi simple qu'il y parait ou que l'on voudrait bien croire. Au final une chouette plongée sur un sujet difficile, traité avec justesse sans condescendance ni jugement, avec une belle touche d'humanité.
When I read this as a teenager it really resonated with who I was at the time and what I was going through. On Goodreads the top review is essentially someone complaining she didn't get the mystery novel she was expecting and therefore it's bad. I disagree.
Do I think it's as perfect as I did? No, but I still think it's a pretty good book. It touches upon the theme of suicide in a much better way than certain other popular books have done. The reality of it is that suicide isn't always explainable or understandable to those left behind. For the most part, only those who chose to end their life knows the ins and outs of what they were going through, and for that I think it's a much more realistic take to not make it a detective story with case closed in the end. Cause suicide is much more serious and complex than that. I honestly fault the reader for expecting that of a YA novel about this kind of topic.
