Sean Ferrell

"Ruthie has a problem at school," the narrator of The Snurtch tells us, and it isn't her fellow students, her classroom, or her academic subjects. No, her problem is the titular Snurtch. A nasty individual, one who isn't good at taking instruction, but who excels at making itself unpleasant to her classmates, the Snurtch follows Ruthie wherever she goes, often getting her into trouble in class and making her unpopular on the playground. When Ruthie shares a picture of the Snurtch in class, show more the response of her classmates, together with the knowledge that they too are troubled by such creatures, reconciles her to her school life...

The second collaboration from author Sean Ferrell and illustrator Charles Santoso, following upon I Don't Like Koala, this entertaining picture-book addresses an all-too-common problem in young children - the inability to control feelings of anger, aggression, and spite - in an innovative and creative fashion. Here these feelings are externalized, made into a creature known as the Snurtch, allowing young readers to visualize the problem, and to see how bad behavior is as much a problem for the wrongdoer, as for those who must deal with her. I liked the way that Santoso depicted the Snurtches here, showing them in vibrant but semi-transparent color, as this emphasizes their almost ghost-like, haunting quality. I would recommend The Snurtch to anyone looking for children's stories that address negative emotions, and how to deal with them. show less

This book is why I read outside my literary fiction comfort zones. A time-traveling, dystopian murder mystery with a main cast of one, this book basically blew my mind. I am sitting here, wondering about it all, unable to read anything else.
At first, the premise sounded way too good to be true; no one has ever (to my knowledge) written a novel like this before. When things started getting hairy- and there is no other word I would pick to describe the mess the narrator found himself, in his show more own life- it began to really bother the O.c.d. In me.... Such a convoluted, confusing, hairy mess!! And then the running..... So... Much... Running. I was exhausted just reading about it. But I digress:

Each year our narrator (who has no name) celebrates his birthday at a party in an abandoned hotel in a future New York where the only guests are past and future versions of himself. The book starts with his 39th birthday party, the year that a dead version of himself and a beautiful woman in a red dress appear at the party for the first time. What has been a fairly consistent experience for the past years, is suddenly untethered from the sequence of events he thought he knew. How are there versions of himself at the party older than the dead one? (PARADOX!!!). Where did this woman come from, and why has she never been here before? How do the younger versions of himself keep doing things he has never done before? There is a tear in the fabric of his own time, and only he can repair it. And then the narrator has to go back in time 6 months, to stop the unnecessary death of someone he loves a great deal (and this is where it gets really GOOD!!)
I know, it sounds like a terrible sci-fi movie. And I see how the book may seem like an unnecessarily complicated mind game. But the ways it asked me to reflect on being, identity, self-hood, reliance and interdependence made it more than simply a puzzle to be solved. I can not stop thinking about the ways these versions of self fit together and what it means for those of us in the real world to have past and future versions of ourselves that we are responsible for and to. Combined with how well Ferrell described the settings and the result is a book that is cinematic, in the best possible way.

I may need a parrot tattoo, now.....

Must read!!! show less

Okay, I've been thinking about this a lot. I originally gave this one two stars but that's really not fair.

Here's the deal, there were sections of this book that were very much two stars. Continuity issues (talk to me about the damn snow), some story lines that felt left hanging or man handled, and lack of any discussion of why the world had gone to shit. Although, the feral parrots were quite cool I thought.

But, there were some story lines that were absolutely lovely and so well written show more that I wanted them to become the book I was reading: Lily, Phil, Emma, the moving of all the books to the new 'library system', and the painters constantly repainting the solar system on the ceiling of Grand Central Station. Those bits were lovely. show less

Sean Ferrell grabs you by the collar and forces you to feel the physical, psychological, and emotional pain that Numb is unable or unwilling to feel. He jars you with the bizarre, distracts you with pretty women, and while you’re looking the other way, pounds nails into your heart. Unlike Numb, you feel each swing of the hammer. It’s like Palahniuk meets Steinbeck in a lion cage. They sit, have coffee, and play chicken with a pairing knife. You are wondering who is going to lose a finger show more and if the other will sew it back on. The read is refreshing and real, and I can honestly say I can’t wait for his next book. show less