I don’t read Young Adult fiction these days and when I do, it’s usually because of the others’ recommendations. Kara, mother of a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old, urged me to give Michael Grant’s Gone (April 2009; Egmont Press) a try as she thought I’d enjoy it.
While she was telling me to read it, her 14-year-old wandered into the kitchen, grabbed a drink from the fridge, and left without a word. About ten minutes later, he came back with a hardback, left it on the kitchen table, and left. The hardback was Gone. Kara was speechless because apparently, he rarely lent books. I wasn’t sure if I would take it, so I flipped the book open to read the first page:
ONE | 299 HOURS, 54 MINUTES
One minute the teacher was talking about the Civil War. And the next minute he was gone.
There.
Gone.
No “poof.” No flash of light. No explosion.
Sam Temple was sitting in third-period history class staring blankly at the blackboard, but far away in his head. In his head he was down at the beach, he and Quinn. Down at the beach with their boards, yelling, bracing for that first plunge into cold Pacific water.
For a moment he thought he had imagined it, the teacher disappearing. For a moment he thought he’d slipped into a daydream.
Sam turned to Mary Terrafino, who sat just to his left. “You saw that, right?”
Mary was staring hard at the place where the teacher had been.
It was intriguing enough for me to take Gone home. A couple of hours later, I was more interested in finishing the book than watching a much anticipated DVD. That says it all, really.
Michael Grant’s style of writing is a little unusual, but it has a rhythm that works. Let’s hope the rest of the story will be good as well.