"The Body Of Christopher Creed" by Carol Plum-Ucci
Review by Sophie
Torey is a typical middleclass high school student in Steepleton, a typical middleclass smalltown in Egg Harbor Township. He's an athlete, the guitarist in a highschool-band, the boyfriend of the prettiest girl in town, a popular kid. He's perfectly normal.
Torey is a typical middleclass high school student in Steepleton, a typical middleclass smalltown in Egg Harbor Township. He's an athlete, the guitarist in a highschool-band, the boyfriend of the prettiest girl in town, a popular kid. He's perfectly normal.
Christopher Creed is the school's weirdo. He has no friends and plenty of classmates who have been picking on him throughout his entire schoolcareer. One day he disappears, leaving behind an mysterious letter to his principal and a chaos of rumours and suspicions. Did he run away? Commit suicide? Or get murdered? As the town searches for somebody to blame, Torey, who hasn't had more to do with Christopher than anybody else in his school, starts to question the world he grew up in. Together with two unlikely allies, punk-girl Ali and the "boon", juvenile delinquent Bo Richardson, he goes on a quest to find Christopher, dead or alive. On the way, his life starts to unravel in front of his eyes, as he discovers the lies, intolerance and hypocrisy of his friends and neighbors. "The Body of Christopher Creed" by Carol Plum-Ucci is a stunning novel about finding yourself and breaking your egg's shell. It portrays scarily accurate the microcosms "high school" and "smalltown". The Author manages to make the plot complicated and numerous turns just as believable as her characters, only the last chapter has a very surprising ending that is unbelievable and maybe a bit over the top. Plum-Ucci manages to amazingly get a grasp on many very delicate topics such as intolerance, criminal injustice, smalltown lies, prejudices, overprotective parents, high school cliques, religion and truth in relatively short novel.
Be warned: This is one of those books that make you get bad grades because you just can't bring yourself to put it down in order to homework. And it's also the kind of book that will stay on your mind, long after you finished it.
Most teenagers will probably be able to relate to this book and recognize a lot of people from school, their neighborhood and maybe even themselves. The fact that it takes place just one county away from Cape May makes it even more interesting, since somebody in say California has no way of ever understanding the magic of hanging out at WAWA on a Saturday night (which happens frequently in this novel). So support a local author and read this book!
Check out "The Body of Christopher Creed" by Carol Plum-Ucci at the library...
1 comment:
Carol Plum-Ucci is a South Jersey native and resides a few miles away from here.. She also graduated from Rutgers. :) Amazing NJ author. Great review, Sophie!
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