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

Re:Who needs sports?

[NineNine]

Ah, little do you know that the chicks athletes get are the boring blond bimbos that are just waiting for the boring house in the suburbs with the boring SUV full of boring kids. While those who "smoke and refuse to participate" are the ones that get the really cool chicks.

Re:God I'm sick of the whining

[voss]

Im sick of a--holes, who tell me and others like me didnt suffer or "thats what everyone went through and stop whining."

What the f--k is the difference between being physically abused by a peer or being physically abused by a parent? The difference is if your physically abused by a parent you can call family services and theyll act. You try reporting physical abuse by a peer the abuser wont even get arrested will get some minor slap on the wrist and then beat u up again for reporting them.

This is not about "having no friends" . I would have been happy having no friends if the bullies would have just left me the h-ll alone!

Some of us have emotional scars that have lasted years, and therapy bills going into the thousands of dollars, and we didnt suffer?

Most of us didnt care if we didnt hang around with the popular people, or had only a few friends, or didnt get many dates. We just didnt think it was right to be tormented by others because didnt have those things.