That Was Then, This Is Now

This is an extremely difficult book to rate, because I wanted so much to love it. For slightly less than the first half, there's a wonderfully Outsiders-esque feeling, despite having a much less likable narrating character and a more “tell-not-show” writing style. I'd have easily given it a 4-stars rating (instead of 2.5 rounded up to 3) if only the writing and plot hadn't spiralled so far out of control after the first half - or slightly sooner, actually.

From that point forward, the writing feels ‘phoned in' and uninspired, especially when things just begin happening with no purpose - and rapidly, for that matter. Behaviours change. Personalities falter. Decisions make no sense. Actions have no logical catalyst. Worse, the vocabulary became so simple by the halfway mark that it started to feel lazy and rushed.

It absolutely shows that Hinton didn't put love and inspiration into this tale the way she did The Outsiders. (The end matter proves it by explaining she was basically coerced by her boyfriend into writing two pages a day - otherwise he'd refuse to pay attention to her - as a means of trying to force her out of writer's block. Man, times sure were different back then. Yikes!) And the ending... oh, that ending. It made trudging through the decline in writing quality a complete waste of time.

It's a shame, because I truly enjoyed the first half. I didn't like it as much as its predecessor, but I did like the general atmosphere and seeing the characters' lives play out. Mark and M&M won my heart, while Bryon was always a little too brash and unsympathetic for my tastes - a shame, since he's the narrating character. I'd have loved to read a book from Mark's perspective or even M&M's. You know, just with a very different ending. One where Mark isn't betrayed by his own damn brother and M&M's life isn't ruined just because he sought freedom from his cruelly dismissive dad.

There's a laughably heavy-handed approach to an anti-drug message which, unfortunately, makes one of the main characters - Bryon - have what feels like a complete personality shift into a whiny, ungrateful, disloyal jerk. One incident changes his world outlook so completely, you'd think that perhaps he were suffering from mental issues as the result of the blow to his head, but that's not the case. He just completely abandons everything to switch gears, even though what happened is a series of events in which he had a significant part, including something he brought on himself by willingly taking blame for something he didn't do. Ironic, since he does this to protect the person he betrays very soon after.

It's almost as if Hinton forgot that the loyalty and devotion among characters are part of what made The Outsiders so good and so impactful; instead of hitting readers over the head with morals in that book, she allowed the characters to remain themselves and show (not tell!) the story through their eyes in a way which always felt authentic. That isn't the case, here. It feels more like having an anti-drug, anti-violence PSA interrupt the book or something, because even though the characters in question were drifting apart and the ultimate traitor was always a bit iffy on the use of drugs, he never even stops to talk to this person who's been his lifelong friend upon discovering they're selling drugs. Bryon never takes a moment to inquire, to discuss, to do anything other than immediately call the cops and narc on the person he apparently feels less loyalty to now than the family of a girl he's only been dating for a short while. And for what? Nothing, not really. There's no logical explanation. He's upset because Mark's selling pills and M&M is in the hospital after a bad LSD trip, but he even says himself that he highly doubts what Mark's selling is anything that bad. Yet still he immediately calls the cops without even talking to his own brother first... even though he knows being thrown in juvie again will destroy Mark.

Did I mention that the person selling drugs was doing it to support his family? Because, yeah, that's a thing and the person who betrays him is his own brother. Also, their mother comforts her traitorous son by diminishing the importance of her adopted son whose drug money was helping to keep her family afloat. She tells her biological son that he comes first, he's her only son, she's most concerned about him... and has the audacity to claim she still loves the one she's diminishing. Also, there's some “it's for his own good” nonsense in there, which makes zero sense because he would've stopped dealing if asked - he even says as much, before he knows the cops have been told - and wasn't actually using or addicted to drugs himself. So... how, exactly, is being imprisoned for helping his family good for him...?

Mark deserved so much better than this. Yeah, he's not a saint by any means, even from the very beginning, but he never deserved to have his own family toss him out like garbage and betray him so deeply. It completely destroys him and his life, turning him into a cold and uncaring - and very unhinged - criminal with no heart left, when he once had a heart and a reason for caring about his life. Having Bryon tell us that Mark never had morality when we see otherwise in the story was frustrating. Watching a sympathetic character who'd already lost his biological parents to a murder-suicide lose his adoptive family as well was gutting, especially when the only reason it happened was to push a hamfisted moral. It felt out of place. It felt gross. It felt inauthentic.

So, yeah, one of the characters turns into a spiteful and ungrateful little curse at the drop of a dime and a mother turns against her own adopted child, all to push the sudden, overbearing morality. Then the traitor also suddenly stops loving his girlfriend out of the blue, as if it's her fault that he went and betrayed his brother in her name - without her knowledge or consent. What a crappy and inauthentic (and out-of-character-feeling) ending to a book that started out feeling almost as authentic as its predecessor!

It's sickening and I hate it. I mean, I don't hate the whole book, but I absolutely loathe the ending and more or less dislike the entire second half altogether. Having Mark's entire family - and ‘found family' at that, which was such a big part of The Outsiders - turn against him for something so pathetically stupid is just a slap in the face to readers. And then to have that betrayal break him so deeply that it destroys his entire life... I mean, it's about the same thing as if Ponyboy had run to the cops to tell them Johnny'd committed a crime instead of processing that there were nuances to the situation. Way to miss the mark of what made the previous book so successful.

The author's note claims Hinton wrote this book to make people think whereas she wrote The Outsiders to make people feel, using that as an excuse to say hating the ending is good and the intended reaction. I'm not sure I follow her logic. I'm not even sure I fully believe that, since it seems hard to fathom a book written to force away writer's block is quite so deep, but it isn't my place to question the author's own intentions. I will say, however, that the only thing this book made me think was “wow, this would have been so much better if it didn't devolve into a depressing and unsatisfying end; I sure wish it had better explored loyalty and moral conflict instead of having a sudden heel turn for a main character.”

As a final note, which I just want to mention because the book was written before some of the studies took place and in a time where it would've been far more difficult to research these things: There's a character - M&M, the poor kid - who had a very bad trip on LSD. He's told by the doctors that his chromosomes have been altered and if he ever has children, it's likely the mental damage he suffered might be passed on to them. I did research out of curiosity, because that sounds like a horrible fate which I assumed would at least somewhat be based on reality... but all I found was that it can cause damage when a pregnant woman takes LSD (which, duh). Otherwise, it takes very large amounts of LSD to initiate chromosomal changes and past LSD usage by parents has no effect on the likelihood for a child to be born with birth defects. Considering the character in question had never used LSD before and didn't, you know, die, it's safe to assume he didn't come anywhere near to partaking in enough LSD to cause the diagnosis he's given in the story. I found this interesting and thought others may want to know the updated findings from modern research.

This book is just..... it hits me really hard. One thing that I absolutely hate is change. When things get comfortable, i want it to always stay the same. But no, that is not how it work. As time goes on, everything bounds to change. What you had you might lose it. What you loved you might hate it. It's inevitable and one way or another you have to face it.