Long Way Down

Long Way Down by Jason Reynolds (2017)

Long Way Down is a novel in verse about a teenager named Will whose older brother was just shot and killed. Will has been taught the rules since a young age: no crying, no snitching, get revenge. So he finds his brother's gun and sets out to get revenge on the person he's sure is responsible for his brother's murder. He gets in the elevator and starts down. On every floor, another person gets on - a person who is dead and who tells Will another part of the interconnected story leading up to this moment.

It was a very quick read, though you do get a lot of story. At least enough to know that Will is learning a lot about where and how things can go very wrong when you follow these rules he's been given. It's clear that following them will only lead to more violence and death. It's also clear that he doesn't even know for sure who killed his brother, even though he feels sure about it.

I keep hearing in my head what my former Teen Librarian from a couple of years ago would say every time she read something about a black kid that involved the inner city and violence. She got very frustrated that the only black kids represented in teen lit lived in the inner city, came from broken homes, were involved in gangs, etc. So I do keep thinking about that. However, that's taking a broad view of teen books which, while important, isn't the whole story. This book itself is undoubtedly good. It's popular and has won awards. It really packs a punch. It says a lot with relatively few words.

At the same time, this sparseness of words is what I think kept me from getting into this story as much as I would have liked. I think I just don't love the novel-in-verse format. I know I loved The Good Braider, but that used a slightly different style of verse that was a little denser. Here, there really were just a smattering of words on each page. They were well-chosen words, but for me, I just like more of them, if that makes sense.

As a side note, I've heard that the audio version of this book, which Reynolds narrates, is fantastic. I considered that format, but it's only about an hour and a half long and I was looking for something to fill more hours of my commute.

This is the second book by Jason Reynolds that I've read (after Ghost, which I liked more) and I think I'll probably read more of his books. I'm especially interested in The Boy in the Black Suit and All American Boys.

Ghost

Ghost by Jason Reynolds (2016), narrated by Guy Lockard

Castle Cranshaw - self-nicknamed Ghost - knows how to run. He's been running fast since he was a kid trying to outrun a bullet. But track has never been his thing, until one day he impulsively shows up a practice and challenges one of the best runners there. The coach takes ghost under his wing and adds him to the team. But it's a challenge. Not the running - that part's easy. What Ghost keeps getting stuck on is the part where he needs to stay out of fights, plus he doesn't have the right gear for running track and the only way he knows how to get it might get him in even more trouble.

Middle-grade fiction has never really been my thing, but I keep hearing about Jason Reynolds and this book in particular recently (partly because a book group at work is reading it) so I downloaded the audio which was a nice short listen between some of my longer audiobooks.

I enjoyed this story way more than I thought I would. Ghost is really a great kid, and Reynolds captures all the difficulties of growing up with its myriad pressures and few solutions available to kids. Ghost is really doing the best he has with what he has, which isn't much. His father is in jail for trying to shoot Ghost and his mother, and now his mom is working her butt off to take care of him. She works in the cafeteria at a hospital and she's taking classes to be a nurse. Every time she appears in the story she is exhausted, and it's not hard to see why. She's a pretty amazing, strong woman and I think Ghost sees this too.

He's not over what happened when he was so young, but he's never really talked about it. Only when he joins the track team does he have a real support system of peers who help each other out and understand what their friends have been through. This camaraderie is due in no small part to their fantastic coach, a former Olympic medalist who doesn't like to talk about his past but obviously cares more about the kids on his team than pretty much anything else.

The other great adult in Ghost's life is Mr. Charles who owns a store where Ghost goes all the time to buy his favorite snack, sunflower seeds. The two have a great relationship and when Ghost finally gets his track uniform Mr. Charles is the first person he goes to show it to.

Lest we forget how young this kid is, at one point he exclaims how great it would be to own a store because you wouldn't have to buy groceries. I totally remember being young enough to think that makes sense. He's also obsessed with the Guinness Book of World Records, memorizing and rattling off the names of people who hold records for various feats, a very common interest for people that age (I also found it fascinating, but never got as far as memorization.)

Guy Lockard captured all the humor and wonder and cleverness of Ghost's personality and made this book a lot of fun to listen to. He narrates some other books by Reynolds too, so if I decide to read more from this author - which seems likely after Ghost - I'll probably listen to the audio version again.