As you all know I have read this book lately and I have now chosen four drafts/paragraphs that I would like to share with you.
Theme
page: 45.” Beneath those photos were five more that Grandpa Portman had never shown me. I wondered why, until I looked closer. Three were so obviously manipulated that even a kid would see through them: one was a laughable double exposure of a girl “trapped” in a bottle; another showed a “levitating” child, suspend by something hidden in the doorway behind her; the third was a dog with a boy’s face pasted crudely onto it. As if these weren’t bizarre enough, the last two were like something out of David Lynch’s nightmares: one was an unhappy young contortionist doing a frightening back bend in the other a pair of freakish twins were dressed in the weirdest costumes I’d ever seen. Even my grandfather, who’d filled my head with stories of tentacle-tongued monsters, had realized images like these would give any kid bad dreams”
This paragraph really gives you a good idea of what the book is about. It really describes the theme in the book by the way it describes the characters and and how his grandfather used to tell him stories. It also gives you an hint about the monsters that will appear later in the book.
page 79. setting: My grandfather had described it a hundred times, but in his stories the house was always a bright and happy place-big and rambling yes, but full of light and laughter. What stood before me now was no refuge from monster but a monster itself, staring down from its perch on the hill with vacant hunger.
This paragraph describes the setting of where most of Grandpa Portmans stories took place. The setting is a old house situated on a small island in Whales. This is also the place where most of the setting in the book takes place and the house plays an important role in the book. This is the house were Grandpa Portman grew up and Jacob is now returning to the same house many years later to find out the truth about all the stories he has been told.
plot. page 243. “He could see the monsters. The moment she said it, all the horrors I thought I’d put behind me came flooding back. Thew were real. They ere real and they’d killed my grandfather. “I can see them too”, I told her, whispering it like a secret shame. Her eyes welled and she embraced me.
“I knew there was something peculiar about you” she said. “And I mean that as the highest compliment.”"
This draft really describes the plot very well. The most important point is that all the stories Grandpa Portman ever told were real. The peculiar children were real, the monsters and the loop. Everything turned out to be true. It also describes the feelings that appear between Jacob and Emma.
Character development page 302-303
“So i squeezed my eyes shut, because I didn’t want its gaping jaws to be the last thing I’d ever see, and gripped the shears in front of me with both hands. Time seemed to stretch out, like they say it does in car crashes and train accidents and free-falls from airplanes. and the next thing I felt was a bone-jar-ring collision as I slammed into the hollow..” (…) ” I killed it, I thought, I really killed it. All the time I’d spent being afraid, I never dreamed that I could actually kill one.”
This describes how Jacobs thoughts changes fast, in the first part he is really scared and he really thinks that he is going to die. The last part shows that he has made something happen. This is his thoughts after an important event in the book. This part is important for the book because you get an inside look to Jacobs thoughts. It gives you a deeper inside of who he is as a person.
I really enjoyed reading this book and would strongly recommend it to others!
If you have read the book I would love to know what you thought of it in the comments!
