Sarah's Library

5/4 - This is a hard book to review, but I can definitely say I'm enjoying it.  The motivations of some of the characters are beyond me.  There doesn't seem to be a 'nice' boy among the whole lot of them.  Maybe Piggy, but he seems to spend the whole time following the boys who are cruel to him, which makes it hard to feel too much sympathy or affection for him.  I did not understand Ralph's behaviour at the beginning at all.  I think I have trouble putting myself in other's shoes, if I was in Ralph's place (as an adult female) I know what I would do, but I don't know what I would do if I was a 12-year-old boy.  Definitely a compelling, if sometimes mystifying, read.  To be continued...

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

6/4 - I'm having some problems with the disjointedness of the dialogue.  The boys start and stop sentences all over the place, making the flow of some of the conversations a bit hard to follow.  Some of the words used as an alternative to "Wow!" are completely unfamiliar, which is to be expected considering the time it was written as well as the era it was set, but it does add to the confusion created by the broken sentences.  I'm glad to see Jack go, but at the same time I think his departure from the main group is just going to cause a slow burn of resentment that will lead to an even worse explosion the longer it's allowed to simmer.  To be continued...

WARNING SPOILERS AHEAD

7/4 - See, an even bigger explosion and now poor Piggy's dead, as well as Simon.  The boys had faults that caused me to feel a lack of sympathy towards all of them, to some degree (some more than others), so the only time I felt even a little bit emotional was during the description of the killing of the first sow.  While I was telling myself not to tear up I was also thinking "Those stupid boys, don't they realise if they kill the sows the piglets won't have a mother to feed them and they'll die of starvation, cutting off your meat supply completely.  They should be killing a piglet every few days instead."
Another reviewer mentioned that this book is taught in primary school (although they actually said grade school), I desperately hope it's not taught to children of such a young age (the 10-year-old boys that I remember from my school days would've attempted to act out some of the more gruesome scenes in the playground at lunchtime, with possibly horrific results).  This is definitely an 'M' rated book, with graphic descriptions of pig slaughtering, dead bodies that appear to move, murder and what happens to a person's body when they fall off a cliff - subject matter far too adult for anyone under the age of 14.
Most of the boys' ages aren't given, except to divide them into groups of either 'littluns' or 'biguns'.  The 'littluns' being around 6 and, I think, the 'biguns' being anywhere from 10 to 14, but it was hard to tell just from the writing.  When the rescue arrived and Jack was described as being a 'little boy' I thought maybe I had been wrong in imagining him as a big 14-year-old, maybe he just seemed big because of his aggressive and domineering personality.  I wonder what would've happened if there had been another chapter.  Would there have been some kind of disciplinary action when the boys got back to England and possibly had to explain what had happened on that island?