“Skipped Parts” by Tim Sandlin
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Summary:
Thirteen-year-old Sam Callahan, a South Carolinan, finds himself trapped with his boozy mom in Wyoming. He meets a local girl, Maurey, who wants to lose her virginity. That works out too well and Maurey becomes pregnant, and the hypocrisies of the adults around them are comically exposed as they all deal with the consequences. Has a 4.8 out of 5 rating with 45 reviews so far.
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By Erin Clark December 21, 2011 - 3:37 PM
This is a hard book for me to rate. I don’t quite know how I feel about it.
Sam is a 13 year old boy who, along with his mother Lydia, is banished to GroVont, Wyoming by his grandfather because his mom messed up somehow. He doesn’t fit in at school and is pretty miserable until he finds a friend in Maurey. Together they explore things beyond their maturity level and learn a big lesson the hard way.
It was hard to get into the book in the beginning. It was pretty slow but I thought it was well written so I kept on. I had a really hard time remembering that Sam was only 13. The way the book is written and by Sam’s “voice” you would think he was an adult or at the least late teens. I just couldn’t find it believable that a 13 year old talked this way. Then there were times where he was so ignorant to a subject that you were reminded of his age.
I liked the characters, for the most part. They were developed well and interesting. Well, interesting doesn’t really cover it, they were down right dysfunctional. There were a lot of really funny moments in the story, and I loved those parts. I love a story about funny, dysfunctional families. Lydia was my favorite. She was crass, vulgar and irresponsible. She made the story fun.
There were parts where I just got bored and I skimmed over them. The writing was good, though. There were parts that I didn’t care about.
The part that disturbed me, and will disturb a lot of people, is the fact that these 13 year olds are having sex. I’m no prude, but I didn’t enjoy reading such graphic descriptions of these kids exploring each other. If it were toned down a bit, I would have liked it a lot better. Then, it wouldn’t have been the same book, though.
It made me sad when I really thought about it. In this day and age, 13 year old probably think very closely to this now. It’s different from when I was 13, and that wasn’t all that long ago!
In some of the reviews this book is compared to “Catcher in the Rye”. This book cannot compare to “Catcher in the Rye” in any way, shape or form.
I just learned this is the first book of a trilogy. I won’t be reading the rest of them.
The book was well written and brought out a lot of emotions. I just didn’t like it as much as I wanted to.
2.5 out of 5 stars