Title: Draw the Dark
Format: Hardcover, 338 pages
Published: 10/01/10
Publisher: Carolrhoda Labs (Lerner)
Source: Library
“There are things in Winter,
Wisconsin, folks just don't talk about. The murder way back in '45 is one. The
near-suicide of a first-grade teacher is another. And then there is 17-year old
Christian Cage. Christian's parents disappeared when he was a little boy, and
ever since he's drawn and painted obsessively, trying desperately to remember
his mother. The problem is Christian doesn't just draw his own memories. He can
draw the thoughts of those around him. Confronted with fears and nightmares
they'd rather avoid, people have a bad habit of dying. So it's no surprise that
Christian isn't exactly popular. What no one expects is for Christian to meet
Winter's last surviving Jew and uncover one more thing best forgotten the day
the Nazi's came to town.”
Basic Synopsis:
Christian
Cage is a 17 year old artist, living in the small town of Winter, WI. Strange
things have always seemed to happen to those close to Christian, so most of the
town is wary of him. When Christian ends up sleep painting on the side of a
barn belonging to the richest and most influential man in town, it opens up a
whole new can of worms involving a mystery over half a century old.
Characters:
As for
Christian, I don’t have much to say one way or the other. He’s a very
unimpressionable character for me. He was definitely on the angsty,
everybody-hates-me, depressed/crazy artist side of things. I did like that
another character in the book plainly pointed this out, so I know it was
intentional. I don’t usually like self-pitying protagonists though, so it’s a
given.
Plot and Story:
Draw the Dark is definitely an unconventional book
written in an unconventional way. It is also a hard book to critique because
I’m not sure of all that happened. It took me 100 pages of the book to finally
understand what was going on, and then I was lost for the last 100 pages. It
was an incredibly hard book to follow and understand. I don’t think at all that
Ilsa Bick was just winging it or BS’ing the reader in any way. I could tell
that the author had a clear picture of what was going on. The problem was in
conveying her vision to the reader.
Something positive
I can say for the book is that, in the middle part I understood, the book does
cover an interesting piece of US history I was unaware of. I would say what it
is but for those who intend to read the book, I don’t want to spoil anything.
Overall:
Unfortunately
this book was very hard to understand and I wasn’t always sure what was going
on. I really wanted to like it because I’d liked Ilsa J. Bick’s other novel Ashes so much. In the end, I give it 2.5 of 5 stars.
