Rumble Fish

So, I love The Outsiders - both book and movie - and I enjoyed the film version of Rumble Fish, so reading this book seemed like a good choice. I expected to love it as much as the aforementioned titles, but it just didn't have the impact or life that I hoped it would.

There are so many parts I recognize from the film, but the writing style here just feels too juvenile to get the same atmosphere across. Which, yeah, this is from the POV of a young teen in a gang so it makes some sense to have a less adult feel to the writing, but so was The Outsiders and the prose there flows a lot better. Maybe Rumble Fish is too rushed? Maybe there isn't enough time to develop emotional attachments to characters who aren't particularly likeable? I don't know, but I didn't love this the way I hoped I might.

Also, one of my big pet peeves in writing is when people write “could of,” “should of,” etc instead of “could've,” “should have,” and such. This book makes that mistake frequently, I presume as an intentional portrayal of how Rusty James speaks, and it grinds my gears every time.

As for the story itself: I like the concept a bit more than the execution. Though I enjoyed the film version, I felt similarly about it and hoped the story would expand on some of my favourite parts. Unfortunately, it didn't... and I discovered that it feels even more unnatural to see someone's inner monologue and realize he even thinks of his own brother as “the Motorcycle Boy” instead of by a real name. It's also harder to make what you will of the story's meaning - if there really is one - when you're trapped in the POV of a character who's honestly kind of an oblivious jerkwad until the very end. Rusty-James' point of view just doesn't work the same way Ponyboy's does in The Outsiders. It's too unfeeling, too detached - at times almost like he's reading off a grocery list instead of saying what's happening.

In The Outsiders, it's obvious when a character has PTSD or when another cares and is afraid of showing it. In Rumble Fish, it's more like a guessing game. Is there a point to being told one character hasn't yet shown interest in girls (as in, are we being stealthily told he's gay) or is it just another random factoid which has no relevance - of which there are plenty? Is there a moral behind another character shunning a “junkie” despite caring about them or is it just there for shock value? These are things which feel half-addressed, half-formed, and ultimately unimportant from the way the narrative handles them. It's a shame, because I wanted there to be more to it. I wanted to leave this book feeling the same impact I did when I finished The Outsiders. I wanted to care about the characters, but aside from Steve and a peripheral interest in the Motorcycle Boy - which kept getting tainted by how silly his own brother calling him that felt - I just didn't because there wasn't enough content or emotion to feel like I actually got to know any of them.

The ending felt a bit like it was trying to be as poignant as the ending of The Outsiders, but it really missed the mark for me. I knew it was coming because I'd seen the film already, and honestly it made me cry when watching... not when reading. Seeing how I still cry every time a certain few characters in the Harry Potter series, The Hunger Games trilogy, and The Outsiders die despite revisiting those many times, I don't think knowing it was coming made the impact less. It just... didn't have the oomf I hoped for, I suppose. It was there and gone in barely a handful of pages, tacked onto the end like it was an afterthought. No exploration of emotions, feelings, thoughts - barely anything at all, really, and nothing so poignant as what happens in the film.

Also, in all honesty, I kind of hoped the book would cover more of an aftermath than the film. It would've been so much better if it had, I believe. Then again, maybe not; if it were written in the same detached way, it'd just be a major let down regardless.

But it's not bad. I don't dislike it. I'm just disappointed that it wasn't everything I'd built it up to be in my head and didn't make me feel as emotionally attached as I'd hoped. I took quite a bit from the story, personally, but it's as if I can tell that what I took from it is of my own creation and not something intended. Maybe I'm wrong; maybe I'm catching onto things that really are intentionally there and discrediting them as not being purposeful or meaningful to the author because of the detached writing style. I wouldn't know. I'll never know.

Three stars feels like a reasonable middle ground between the two sides of this. Maybe even 3.5, if only that were an option. I think I'd skip out on re-reading the book and just watch the film in the future if I feel like revisiting the story, but otherwise I do like it. Just not as much as I'd hoped.