Half Mast

PCM2 writes "The Columbine tragedy planted the idea of a certain kind of 'bad kid' into the American consciousness. He isn't social, he doesn't play sports, doesn't dress right. Maybe he spends more time with his computer than with the other kids in his class. It makes sense that he'd be a threat to his classmates, because he's weird. The consequences of this stereotype for the geek culture have already gotten a lot of air time on Slashdot -- most notably Jon Katz's Hellmouth series. So I immediately thought of Slashdot when I read Christopher Null's novel, Half Mast." Read on for the rest of PCM2's review. Half Mast author Christopher Null pages 219 publisher Sutro Press rating 7 reviewer PCM2 ISBN 0972098100 summary An interesting novel of murder among high school outsiders.

Alex, the protagonist of the story, is a geeky kid. He gets picked on. And he kills somebody because of it. But that's pretty much where the similarities between Alex and Dylan Klebold end.

What's refreshing about Half Mast is how the author accurately captures the world of a high-school outsider. Writers can be pretty introverted types themselves, but few of them end up killing anybody. So when they try to imagine the type of character who would, a lot of them tend to fall into the trap of inventing someone even more unfathomably nerdy than themselves. Thankfully, Null avoids this.

Alex isn't a complete, pathetic loner. He has friends. And together, Alex, Travis and James aren't the typical cookie-cutter stereotypes of kids too terminally dorky to get with the program. They're not so trollish that they can't get within booger-flicking distance of a girl, or so chess-club square that they wouldn't touch a drop of alcohol at a party (in fact, they spend much of their summers doing just the opposite). Null gets it: that most geeks aren't necessarily "deprived," and being an outsider isn't always about being excluded. It's about being different -- and that, in and of itself, can have its consequences.

In Alex's case, his nemesis is Steve Williams: hometown hero, star athlete, the pride and joy of Fall Valley High -- if you care about that sort of thing, that is. Alex doesn't, particularly. He fails to kowtow to Steve the way the way Fall Valley's golden boy thinks he deserves -- and here's where his proverbial troubles begin. Steve subjects Alex to a series of humiliating tortures that should have even the most picked-on geek cringing.

When Alex does finally strike back, it isn't with a hail of gunfire, either. He's calculating about it. I must admit, I'm not really convinced that Alex's modus operandi would actually pan out the way it does in Half Mast. But it certainly makes for more interesting reading than your standard shoot-out, and in its way, it's much more sinister. Also, because Alex doesn't have the option of the Columbine killers' quick way out, he's forced to live with his actions and their impact on his own life.

That's the book's focus, and what saves it from being just another wannabe crime thriller. Christopher Null cares about his characters, and he's taken care to depict them in a way that geeks will find sympathetic and (mostly) believable.

While a lot of Null's characters and situations were amusingly familiar, others rang less true. The Steve Williams character was a little too prone to making speeches about the relationship between bullies and their victims, for example, instead of just knocking Alex into the dirt the way the kids at my school would have done. There were also a few too many end-of-chapter "zinger" one-liners for my taste, and the novel uses the awkward device of a present-day journal talking about events that took place several years in the past.

Still, it's an impressive debut novel about an uncommon subject matter, and one I think a lot of Slashdotters would get a kick out of. Half Mast is a fast read, and an enjoyable one. It's also notable because the author chose to self-publish rather than go the traditional route. (Or maybe the topic was too "troublesome" for mainstream publishers in a post-Columbine world?)

You can purchase Half Mast from bn.com as well as from Null's own Web site at sutropress.com, which also has some excerpts from the book. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.

Comments

won't work

[brmic]

1. you do not have to have a redisposition to psychosis AND be a nerd to filp out with a gun. actually some of those who filipped out are neither psychotic nor nerds. in fact they're pretty nice people.
2. psycho tests will get you nowhere, they can all be cheated. (ALL, by ANYONE, forever)

sorry, but as a psychologist who did an internship at a forensic mental hospital, i just had to correct that.

--------
"But i don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here.
I'm mad, You're mad."
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland
--------

Incidentally

[phatlipmojo]

If you like this book, you might check out The Body of Christopher Creed by Carol Plum-Ucci. It also paints a pretty realistic portrait of high school life within the context of a murder/suspense story (a pretty good device for for forcing characters into the sort of stress and introspection that really sets young good young adult fiction apart, if you ask me).
As a librarian, I especially recommend it to those of you who are (or have little brothers/sisters/nieces/nephews/children) in high school.

-phatty 2x4

P.S. Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson and Hard Love by Ellen Wittlinger are also superb YA novels, just in case you find yourself liking that sort of thing.

Re:Alex should have just waited

[Sycraft-fu]

So what, were most Slashdot reader's born with out a sense of humour or do you get it surgically removed later. The orignal poster is joking.

Re:psycho tests

[gowen]

Some forget that those Columbine kids were also on drugs, like cocaine

Says who? Klebold's and Harris's medical records are sealed, and this hardly makes your assertion appear to be common knowledge.

Stop talking bollocks.

Re:Beware the viscious circle.

[Atzanteol]

Try talking, or being friendly, or helping to try to recover their data. Let the "bully" see that perhaps you can be better allies than enemies.

I'm sick of this liberal shit. I was not only geeky throughout school, but short and not very strong as well. I was a *supreme* target for bullying. It started in grade-school. One of the older students would make fun of me, push me around, slap me in the face with wet-gloves (one fond memory of a rainy day). All your *talking* and *working things out* means shit to a 5th grader.

One day I was crying (remember I was in about the 3rd grade) about having recently been beat up. My mother that day told me "the next time that bully hits you, you hit him with your lunchbox, and punch him in the nose." I did. I got about a three month reprieve from being harrased from it too. About every three months we would fight, but there were periods of nothing in between. This carried into higher grades (different bullies).

Did the teasing and bullying stop? No. But I *did* keep my self-respect, and dignity. Talking to irrational people does *not* work. Ususally bullies are too stupid.

Re:It's the times

[Jasonv]

Even in the last couple of months, there have been lots of school shootings.

The only thing that's changed is you're not hearing about them.

Re:psycho tests

[Verteiron]

I can only assume that you're trolling, but just so that no one else puts any stock in the bullshit spewing forth from the parent post...

There is NO relationship between sugar and hyperactivity.

ADD is genetic, not a result of bad parenting (although bad parenting can exacerbate the symptoms).

And as someone who is on medication to treat ADD, I can tell you that my life before and after starting the medication (both as a child and as an adult) is like night and day. Ritalin, the most common medication for ADD, is one of the most well-researched and longest-used (since the 1940s) drugs currently available. Like ANY medication, these is some risk involved in using it. The majority of the risk comes from not using the medication properly, overdosing, or allergic reaction.

There is not one, single, documented case of Prozac (the most common anti-depressant) creating a "psychotic". Not one.

Re:psycho tests

[Anonymous Coward]

You do realize that the "Pd" scale on an MMPI stands for "psychopathic deviation" right? I'm actually asking. They might be telling kids it's a Latin abbreviation for "incense and peppermints" these days, from what I'm hearing (left the field for greener pastures, sorry).

Along the same lines, they DO still call the "K" scale the lying scale, don't they? Or does it mean and do exactly the same thing only they changed the name? Seems to be a lot of that going around.