Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Jesse Andrews
Greg Gaines hates high school. He has mediocre grades, and a disinterest in hanging out with one group at a time. He prefers to drift on the periphery – right up until the point when his mother tells him he has to re-befriend an ‘old flame’ from his past. It seems to Greg that after this point, his life becomes more complicated than he ever imagined.
I didn’t even realise Earl was black. Call me stupid, but I didn’t even look at the front cover before I started this novel. And then it doesn’t bother me that people would be a different race to me, so I guess I didn’t pick it up for ages.
Greg is constantly self-depreciating, and it’s easy to tell why he doesn’t become friends with people. We really don’t understand why he is even writing the novel if he hates it so much to the end. In fact, I’m not sure I understood any of his motives – ever. I just couldn’t care!
Rachel had some potential there, but as Greg says, it was never really about Rachel when it should have been. Greg manages to be a selfish bastard the whole way. The reader doesn’t even feel like that until it’s pointed out by Greg’s acquaintances. That’s the danger of having an unreliable first person narrator I suppose.
There were some humorous points in this novel, and maybe that’s what made it a good film? Honestly, I have no idea. I don’t generally read novels to laugh, and I expect a rock-solid storyline – not what seemed to me a slap-dash novel of ‘let’s pick things that can be made funny, when they really aren’t’.
I had trouble picking this novel off the shelf to read, after my partner told me that it probably wouldn’t be my style. Lo and behold, it wasn’t really my style. For a major motion picture, I just couldn’t love it. I dawdled between giving it two or three stars, and I’ve decided to settle on two. Just because everyone else seems to love it doesn’t mean that I have to bow to that! I’d go for Jesse Andrews other offering, The Haters.
This novel is filled with ‘F-bombs’, sex and a rather disgusting sense of humour. But that being said, I laughed out loud at some of the dialogue, and although I’d never purchase it on my own, I think it’s a good read to borrow from a friend.
I really enjoyed the 
This novel covers only part of Neil’s journey! It is astounding how much he has travelled on his trusty bike. I can’t believe it, but then I think of other people who have cycled around the exterior of Australia and straight across the middle. Still though, its amazing what one man on a tiny bike can do if he is determined.
I read this novel a while ago now. I thought I had read it a long time ago (pre-blog) and so when it took my eye again while I was rearranging my shelves, I thought I’d better give it a review. Turns out I’d never read it, or I hadn’t read it closely enough.
Cliche, cliche, cliche. Fall for for the ‘bad boy’, get dumped, go back to the ‘safe choice’. Seriously girl, I’d be pretty worried you know what love is before you head off into the woods with someone.
I read at least five of the short stories (I had to say I had read half at least), and although the prose was fantastic, the characters believable, there was something about each storyline that left me grasping at anything that would give me meaning with them. I’d read each one, and feel sort of empty, not fulfilled.
It’s the 20th anniversary after the Vietnam War. Since this novel was published and made its way into my hands I have seen a bunch of novels on the same topic. I know better than to ask for them though. I’m not even sure I asked for this one.
By the feel of things, I think the authors had a wide scope of what they could write. For me, I hate poetry. I especially hate random poetry where I can’t work out any of what is going on. Other examples were of not-true stories. What is the point of writing expository fiction if your reader can’t connect in any way with it?
I couldn’t put this novel down. I think I start almost every Brandon Sanderson novel in that way. I didn’t realise it was out until an ill-timed comment from my partner just as I was going to sleep. I then had trouble sleeping because I wanted it right then and there. I begged to have it the next day, but I ended up getting it the day after and polishing it off in a single sitting.