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Rats Saw God from BookRags. Follow Us on Facebook. He and his friends are the talk of the school. San Diego, senior year: Steve is bummed out, drugged out, flunking out. A no-nonsense counselor says he can graduate if he writes a page paper.
Rats Saw God
So Steve starts writing, and as the paper becomes more and more personal, he reveals how a National Merit Scholar has become an under-achieving stoner. And in telling how he got to where he is, Steve discovers how to get to where he wants to be. Rob Thomas is the creator and executive producer of the television series Veronica Mars. This makes perfect sense - seriously, when you were a high school outcast and you're on Goodreads right now, so I feel safe in assuming you were a high school outcast , would you have been able to resist a club based on provocatively and aggressively meaningless artwork, titled for the most culturally offensive acronym you could devise?
No, I assure you, you would not. You would be surprised, though, like our characters, to find yourself repeatedly stumbling onto meaning. Which is a huge part of why the book works. These kids are convinced that they've figured the world out, that everything is stupid and fake, and a thick shell of irony will protect them from getting their hopes up, but But they fall in love anyway.
They get excited about being in a band anyway.
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They get scared to lose friendships when they go off to college anyway. It's your high school experience, basically, but heightened because the life lessons in every young adult novel show up against a backdrop of kids trying to hard not to expect them. Yes, the plot points of the book lose plausibility in the last fifty pages or so. The Bad Thing that breaks Steve is needlessly melodramatic, his therapeutic breakthrough in his daddy issues follows from the act of writing his history but still feels abrupt and unearned, and we lose track of all the minor characters about twenty pages before they develop into real people.
These concerns, though, are minor. The book is a great celebration of the beauty and anguish of our teenage years, and I hope the popularity of other Rob Thomas projects brings in more new readers. View all 3 comments. Dec 29, Ellen Gail rated it liked it Shelves: I really wanted to love this one! To be clear, it's not a bad book, not by a long shot. It's actually really good.
For me, "Rats Saw God" definitely suffered from raised expectations. I mean it's Rob Thomas! Creator of one of my two favorite shows of all time! The other is Buffy. Don't make me choose between them. I know the man can write. He created Veronica, who is so near and dear to my heart. So between the good reviews and getting myself all hyped up, it was inevitable that "Rats I really wanted to love this one! So between the good reviews and getting myself all hyped up, it was inevitable that "Rats" would fall short.
That said, when I look at the book detached from all expectations, I did enjoy it. Normally I am not a fan of switching timelines, but I thought that it worked here to develop Steve's relationships, the one with his father especially. Steve could have very easily been a character I hated. But Steve, and really all the other characters who had annoying quirks, were developed nicely, not just left as flat set pieces.
Overall, it was good. Jan 10, christa rated it liked it. I couldn't get into this book until I put it in context. I couldn't understand the cultural references and where today's teens fit into it. I did the obvious and flipped to the publication date: Then it all made sense. And the book became exponentially better. Especially since it takes place in high school, and mids high schooling is one of my areas of knowledge. Kurt Cobain references; Sinead ripping up a photo of the pope; the casual dress of a non-girlie girl; the entire Seattle sla I couldn't get into this book until I put it in context.
Kurt Cobain references; Sinead ripping up a photo of the pope; the casual dress of a non-girlie girl; the entire Seattle slacker vibe, as interpreted by a super-smart high school boy. Steve York's parents have divorced, and despite the arrangement that he spend the school year in Texas with his father -- a semifamous man he refers to as "the astronaut" because he is an astronaut, Steve is back in California with his mom.
His guidance councilor, meeting him over an infraction involving weed on school property, discovers that Steve York is smart. One of two merit finalists in the school. So why is he in danger of flunking English? The councilor assigns him a page writing assignment. The story shoots back and forth between present day in California and why he was driven out of Texas.
Obviously, this story involves a girl. This book is really cute and written in that sassy Veronica Mars voice that I love. The assignment was treacherous. Squeeze one before it's properly aged and you end up with a pinball stuck just inside your cheek. Allow one to fester and you learn on a midnight trip to the men's room that your face resembles Pompeii. Concluding the job with a Q-tip and alcohol rubdown, I skipped the standard intermission for the red pinchy marks on my face to return to uniform paleness, confident I would run into neither Winona Ryder nor Dub before I regained an unscourged look.
The smell of beer breath, the silk shirts boys wore to dances. The way girls could be cute without being conventionally pretty in a way that doesn't seem to exist now. And students making a grand show of being nonconformists. Sometimes I think the 90s were better than I gave them credit for. This was a great story that was full of verisimilitude and pathos, both serious and humorous. The narrator unlike other teenage narrators like the one in The Perks of Being a Wallflower sounded like an intelligent teenager.
Rats Saw God eBook by Rob Thomas | Official Publisher Page | Simon & Schuster UK
I wasn't surprised or shocked by his language usage or big words because that is who his character was. The humor was what really kept me hooked, and it started right away. They made shirts " This was a great story that was full of verisimilitude and pathos, both serious and humorous.
- Rats Saw God Characters?
- Rats Saw God Characters.
- A Two Step Journey to Hell;
- Rats Saw God by Rob Thomas!
- Steven ("Steve") Richard York.
They made shirts "emblazoned with [their] club slogan, Go With GOD" 28 and drew hilarious criticism from the president of the Christian club with the headline of their brochure which read, "GOD isn't for everyone" Although the story is about a boy who spends a couple years of high school getting drunk and high a lot, those scenes do not really figure much in the plot, at least not as far as Steve the main character is concerned. The most graphic scene is when Steve and his girlfriend each lose their virginity, which did actually make me a bit squeamish; however, I felt it was necessary because this was a big moment in both of their lives.
It also helps that he doesn't dwell on scenes like this; he says them and then moves on. My only criticism is that the last third or so of the book seems very rushed. The book is set up in alternating sections between the two places that Steve lived, either in Houston with his father or in San Diego with his mother, and while this kept the overall pace always moving forward, it caused a lot of issues at the end with wrapping everything up.
It all happened a bit too suddenly for me. It felt like the closer I got to the end, the faster the plot moved. That being said, the actual ending which I will not give away was satisfying and might even have brought a little cloudiness to my eyes. Mar 20, Andrew Hicks rated it it was amazing Shelves: Waaaay back in , I was in the middle of my senior year of college. I was in love with my best friend, who was also in the middle of her senior year of college.
As graduation and the Real World loomed large, we had different coping strategies. Mine was to smoke a bunch of weed and drink, hers was to lose herself in all things teen, from boy-band music to teen movies to YA books. I made fun of her for indulging in all three.
For Christmas she gave me a trade paperback copy of Rats Saw God by Waaaay back in , I was in the middle of my senior year of college. I rolled my eyes as I agreed. And from the opening pages, I identified, and I was in love. I soon read and purchased every other Rob Thomas book in existence there are three , and when I finally came back to regular, habitual reading in , YA became my genre of choice.
Rats Saw God Summary & Study Guide Description
This girl from college, I inboxed her when I started reading YA again, both of us in our mid-thirties, married with kids. We'd been mostly out of touch with each other for the past decade or more. But when we started to trade notes on YA titles we'd both read or were currently reading, there was that spark again of what made us such great partners in crime in the first place.
Thank you, Rob Thomas. Ultimately, I ended up being thankful that he found his voice on the small screen, because he was a bit disappointing as a novelist. Okay, the part involving shoe removal would have best been described as a limerick. I wish I knew this book existed when I was in high school. The book is about a high school senior who has to write a personal essay in order to graduate. He basically recalls his life up to that point, and in his hindsight he figures out a lot about himself, and life.
This is an excellent read for teens who feel out of place in their world - and what teen doesn't? Jun 02, Kelly rated it really liked it Shelves: Steve, despite being a National Merit Scholar, is in danger of not earning the last English credit he needs to graduate senior year.
Rats Saw God Overview
But his counselor makes him an offer: Explain what's going on. Get to the truth. After initial hesitance, Steve starts to write. This is an older book ! Steve has an authentic and believable male voice and one which reminded me of so many of the boys I used to work with. Everything that's been bothering Steve and causing him to quit caring about school is testament to that time when you realize you're not a product of other people but in fact, you're an independent, thinking, feeling person. This is the quintessential bildungsroman, in that as readers we get to see Steve "come of age" right before us in more than one way.
We get him at the point where it seems he can't be redeemed, but through the essay he writes, we watch as he has his huge growth and experiences his moments of clarity. We watch as he's feeling okay about his lot in life in Houston, but then as he navigates the tricky territory of making and keeping friends of his own, of falling in love and experiencing intimacy with a girl, of having his heart trampled on by that self-same girl, of determining what his parents are to him, of having adults just plain let him down or give up on him completely. As he starts figuring these things out, you can't help but love him just a little bit more and hope nothing but the best for him.
Even if Steve is so far removed from his feelings and his experiences he chooses to get high and not do work for a reason , we know it's because he's working through so much alone. But it's that essay and that reaching out from his counselor -- the first adult to actually care about him and not give up on him in years -- that helps him through. At least, that's what we're led to believe because that's how Steve feels; but as the back story develops and the current story progresses, we learn that there were many more allies in Steven's life than he was aware of.
But this is precisely the teen mentality and hell, it's the human mentality, isn't it? It all comes to a head when Steven learns the truth about his parents, about his father and mother's divorce, about how, despite feeling like his father has been worthless, he's actually just been reading and treating Steve the way he felt like Steve needed and wanted to be read and treated. There are drugs and there is sex in this book.
I was actually a little surprised how detailed the sex scenes were, but view spoiler [ they were tasteful and important to who Steve was and why his heart was so shattered over Dub. I'd go as far as to say maybe Thomas's exploration of losing one's virginity is one of the most honest and candid I've read. I was simultaneously happy for and sad for the characters at the same time, in the same way that Steve was happy and sad about it. My heart also ached when view spoiler [ we find out the truth about the divorce of Steve's parents.
For so long he was convinced his father was "the bad guy," the one who was cold and uncaring and unfeeling and generally unaffected by the breakup of the relationship. But the truth was, it was Steve's mother who'd been having an affair and caused the relationship to sour. Of course, Steven couldn't understand or accept this until he became the victim of a broken relationship himself. Then he got to experience and feel things in the way his father did, which made him finally come to understand his dad in a whole new light. Because life is and isn't a series of disconnects. Steve shows us this and understands it for himself.
Though the references are older in this book, I wonder if it matters. I actually loved the slice of time the references gave the story because Steven's voice and experiences are timeless. So even if the death of Kurt Cobain isn't quite as relevant to today's world as it was in the 90s, what Steve experiences rises above it. There's not a disconnect at all. Maybe the dated elements give the book even more relevance as a classic of YA lit.
This is a slower paced book, which is good given it's also a shorter book my paperback had only pages. Writing-wise, it was reminiscent of Paul Zindel and Blake Nelson even though James from "Destroy All Cars" was much louder than Steve would ever be, their voices and stories reminded me so much of one another. Jan 07, Sunil rated it liked it Shelves: Rob's debut novel seems to get all the attention; it's the one teachers will use in their classes if they do that sort of thing.
And it's definitely a good book. It follows two timestreams: Steve York's senior year in San Diego, and his sophomore and junior years in Houston, when his life went horribly, terribly wrong. We get his first-person narration of the present; the story of Houston is his English project. It took me fifty to eighty pages to really get into it, honestly. I was having troubl Rob's debut novel seems to get all the attention; it's the one teachers will use in their classes if they do that sort of thing. I was having trouble imagining these words coming out a seventeen-year-old boy's brain.
And the narrative drive was It's carried along by the strength of the prose, whether or not something actually interesting is happening. Another strength is best described by Chris Lynch, who gets a quote on the back of the book: Thomas brings to the party one more thing that YA lit can never have enough of: