Book Review One: Glass

Glass by Ellen Hopkins, published by Simon Pulse.

I thought I would be speechless by the time I finished this book. However, I've found that I have a lot to say about it. I couldn't put it down. It's 681 pages and I read it in 2 days when I wasn't working. Which is really good since I've been spending a majority of my downtime just watching tv shows on my computer. So hey, it made me productive. It brought me back into the reading game. It made me want to write. But it did not make me want to do crystal meth.

If you're a friend of mine you probably know that I joke about doing crystal meth a lot. I can't stand drugs, don't have a tolerance for people who do them, and yes, can be judgmental about it. But I watch a ton of intervention and I paid attention in health class so I just don't understand why someone would do that to her body. I've joked that it helps you lose weight, which it does do for the narrator in this story, yet it completely destroys her in the process.

I don't know how to explain this format any better than it being a poetic structure. It takes the format of poems although most often it sounds like the narrator is just thinking to herself or arguing with herself. More like Kristina arguing with Bree, her personality when she's on the "monster." The monster is what she calls Meth (crystal, crank, glass all being other names for it). The poem structure will sway you into her perspective. You'll feel like you're Kristina. You'll feel confused and lost. You'll feel like you aren't rational and you're hooked in to something you can't control. I know it sounds ridiculous, but reading it made me feel like I was on meth, that I was a horrible mother and daughter and I had spun out of control. It was all I could do to put the book down and take a step back. I had to remember who I was versus who Kristina was.

As good as the poetry is, and it is helpful in constructing a believable narrator and story, I was troubled by the line breaks. There were many that were unsophisticated, such as ending a line with or, to, one, a, do, to, for, and on. However, most of the poems had a clear construction as can be seen by the image of the poem: one is in the shape of a G and ends with "uilty," or by what words are indented and which aren't:

"Walking with the Monster

Life

was radical

right after I met

the monster.

Later, life

became

harder,

complicated.

Ultimately,

a living

hell,

like swimming

against a riptide,

walking

the wrong

direction in the fast

lane of the freeway,

waking

from sweetest

dreams to find yourself

in the middle of a

nightmare."

(Glass, Hopkins, pg 1).

As you can see, the middle lines repeat the message of the entire poem, yet they do it in a simpler, more direct form. It was interesting to view what little poems could form out of their larger counterparts and to see if they agreed with the main message Kristina was trying to convey. So even though the poems were easy to read, and the book could be read in its entirety in a small amount of time, the smaller poems, the conflict with Bree, the images portrayed by the poems, all forced me, the reader, to spend more time on the page. I couldn't just take it at face value; there was too much to digest.

Unfortunately when I got the book I didn't realize that it was the second part to an already established story about Kristina: Crank, by Ellen Hopkins. I also didn't realize that it was her daughter's story I was reading until I had already started the book. None of this was especially needed information to appreciate Glass, however it does make me respect Hopkins more for not only choosing to write this painful story, but choosing to do so in such an intense and beautiful manner. I'm looking forward to reading more of her books in the future, and also to meeting her in May at the Festival.

P.S. I wouldn't recommend this book for younger readers. It's a sensitive subject and one that should be read with understanding and maturity. There are a lot of intense and emotional topics including graphic and suggestive imagery. However, I would recommend this to anyone who needs to understand why someone becomes addicted to methamphetamines and how they can continue to love and support them.