Friday, October 22, 2010

You by Charles Benoit YP FIC BENOIT

You are just an average 15 year old guy named Kyle Chase. You run with the kids everyone calls losers and people say You make all the wrong decisions. Maybe they’re right because there is a lot of blood and You aren’t sure when exactly everything went wrong. Was it when You started running with the Hoodies? When You met the new kid Zach who keeps pushing You to take bigger risks? Was it what happened with Ashley? Decide fast because time is running out to figure out where You went wrong.

You makes the rather risky decision to tell the story in the second person. The reader is the ‘You’ of the story which ends up really drawing you in. Kyle is really talking just to himself, but by saying ‘you’ he is distancing himself from the horrible act the book ends with. It really works to build the tension and suspense. Kyle is a pretty normal kid, so it makes the ending very jarring. It shows how little mistakes always lead to larger ones and if we lose track of who we are then we run the risk of losing everything. This is a tough, raw, gritty book that will likely leave you stunned.

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