Please Ignore Vera Dietz

It’s been a while since I found a book so completely unputdownable. I mean, in the truest sense — you know, reading in bed late, late at night with one eye peeled open trying to stay awake so you can just find out what happens next. I couldn’t get enough of PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ. I didn’t want it to end. And I found every word that A.S. King laid onto the page utterly genius.

PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is a mystery. It unravels piece by piece as Vera reveals the circumstances under which she lost her best friend, Charlie Kahn, to the Detentionheads, only to lose him again when he died the summer before their senior year. She is angry with Charlie. And she is angry with her dad, the all-too-practical, show more this-will-build-character-type, who is making her work full-time as a pizza delivery technician while maintaining decent grades in school. She’s doing everything she can to be invisible. To be ignored like her mom — who ran off with a podiatrist when Vera was 12 — and dad told her she should ignore other things. Like Charlie’s parents’ violent fights that Vera heard through the trees between their houses.

But no matter what she does — including the vodka she’s stashed under her driver’s seat — Vera can’t ignore Charlie. Charlie wants her to clear his name. Charlie wants her to speak up. Charlie wants her to remember their friendship and grow up and move on.

Told mostly through Vera, but with interjections from “The Dead Kid” (Charlie), the Pagoda (which Vera considers a tacky monstrosity as much as her town’s landmark), and Vera’s dad, Ken, (complete with flow charts), PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ is a beautiful, terrifying, hilarious, quirky, fun tear-jerker of a book. I highly recommend you make this your next read. show less

Excellent voice, thought-provoking, realistic and heartbreaking but thankfully the book did not leave me feeling beaten down or bitter about humanity. Very interesting structure, too! Interspersed with the current timeline are historical interludes about what happened between Vera and her now-dead former best friend Charlie, as well as sections from the POV of her father, Charlie (as a "ghost"), and a local eyesore/landmark pagoda. I loved how the mystery (what really happened to Charlie) gradually untangled.

Vera Dietz's ex-best friend Charlie died about nine months ago. Six months before that was when they went from being best friends to ex-best friends. But Charlie left something behind that he wants Vera to find, and he will haunt her until she does it.

Vera narrates most of the book, but there are also short sections narrated by Charlie's ghost, Vera's father Ken, and the Pagoda, a building that sits at the top of a hill overlooking the city. (The Pagoda, for the record, is strongly anti-littering.)

Vera's mother left when she was twelve. That's bad enough in itself, but Vera also learned that her mother used to be a stripper. When she enters high school, her goal is to keep this off the radar, sending out a silent "PLEASE IGNORE VERA show more DIETZ" signal to keep herself invisible. Meanwhile, she works as a pizza delivery technician to save money for college; her recovered-alcoholic accountant father believes in the value of hard work.

Vera is independent, alone, and lonely. Her father avoids talking about difficult subjects and tells Vera to ignore some of the things that bother her, suggesting work as a solution. However, he's one of the deepest parent characters I've seen in a YA novel: though he avoids some things, he has made a series of improvements in his life, including some difficult changes, and he has been an attentive parent to Vera in her mother's absence. His warnings to Vera (especially about alcohol, and drinking and driving) come from a good place, but he's unable to help her deal with Charlie's death.

Vera eventually does that on her own, summoning the strength to act and bringing her father with her to help clear Charlie's name.

Quotes

It seems like the older people get, the more shit they ignore. Or, like Dad, they pay attention to stuff that distracts them from the more important things that they're ignoring....But there's something about telling other people what to ignore that just doesn't work for me. Especially things we shouldn't be ignoring....If we're supposed to ignore everything that's wrong with our lives, then I can't see how we'll ever make things right. (43-44)

There are kids in my class who can't locate Florida on a map and they're going to get the same diploma I'm going to get. (71)

"Am I not destroying my enemies when I make friends of them?" (Abraham Lincoln said that.) (84)

I miss him so much, but it's confusing, because I missed him long before he was dead, and that's the bitch of it all. I missed him long before he was dead. (88)

Maybe the adults around me were too cynical and old to do anything to help innocent people like Mrs. Kahn or Charlie, or the black kids who were called nigger at school, or the girls Tim Miller groped on the bus. Maybe they were numb enough to blame the system for things they were too lazy to change. (109)

I realize this is the first time I've been in a boy's - uh - man's car and been out of control of a situation. I guess, technically, this is the first time I've been on a real date, too. (114)

He was so confident about this - about this trust - that I saw clearly the hole in Charlie's process. What does a boy who's witnessed what Charlie's witnessed know about trust? How does a boy like that discern right from wrong? (138)

...I knew not to give the best of myself to the worst of people. (197)

I wonder if I'd called the police back when I was ten or thirteen or fifteen, would Charlie be alive now. I regret it. I regret every minute I lived keeping that secret. I regret every time I didn't talk to Charlie about it. I regret having parents who couldn't try to help or seem to care. I regret not being reason enough to make them care more. I regret never saying what I was thinking... (264)

[Vera's mom] called it baggage. "You're scared to open your suitcase and see what your mother packed." ...I see Vera doing this now...I want to tell her it's no use hiding. I want to tell her that the only thing you get from walling yourself off is empty. (Ken Dietz, 273)

I have my fingers on the switch, but have lived a lifetime ignoring the control I have over my own world. (279)

On one hand, it's nice on the other side. Secrets don't exist. There's nothing to ignore, and no destiny. On the other hand, the same thing is possible in life, if only we'd start paying attention to the right stuff. (Charlie, 294) show less

For my class I needed to choose a Printz Award Winner or Honor book. My choice was Please Forget Vera Dietz by A.S. King. I had absolutely no idea what this book was about when I chose it and will admit that I picked it because I loved the cover.

Vera’s best friend Charlie is dead but not quite gone. She sees him a lot, usually at really inconvenient times like when other people are around. He is trying to tell her something, but she doesn’t want to listen.

Vera’s dad’s motto - “Ignore it Vera.”

Ignore the fact that Charlie’s dad beats his wife; ignore Charlie’s weird relationship with a guy who tried to lure them into a car 6 years earlier; ignore what people say about you; ignore that your mom left; ignore everything. show more Vera’s attempt to ignore things does what it does to most people who don’t deal with things, it exacerbates (one of Vera’s vocabulary words) them.

Vera turns to drinking even though her dad is a recovering alcoholic and his dad was an alcoholic (and his dad too). Vera discovers that a couple of drinks make the pain more bearable. With a couple of drinks she can deal with her job delivering pizzas, her relationship with her dad, her failure to deal with Charlie’s death.

Watching Vera come to terms with Charlie’s death and deal with her own life is powerful. Like Melinda in Speak, Vera transforms from “invisible Vera Dietz” to “invincible Vera Dietz.” Vera finds her voice, her power, her confidence and herself. show less

This is amazing story of love and loss and the gray area in between. It's a struggle of one girl to do the most courageous and scary thing in her 17 years, and that's to break through the wall of silence and speak the truth.

Vera Dietz is one of the most amazing female characters I've read in a long time in young adult fiction. She's not perfect - she actually makes many mistakes, is selfish, and cusses like a sailor at times. But she is pure beauty in her inability to be perfect, because she is REAL.

This book pointed out an issue I've been struggling with lately.

Are we who and what we are because that's the roads we chose or are we predestined because we fit into the mold that everyone else put us in? Are we merely a product of what our show more parents, peers and society molded us into based on our money, social status or parent's history?

Or are we the maker of our own destinies?

I guess each person has to answer that question themselves. This book is about Vera Dietz answering that question, for both herself and for Charlie. show less

Vera Dietz's former best friend, Charlie, is dead and haunting her until she comes forward with the secrets she knows about his death. But her anger at him, at her emotionally distant father, at her mother who left when she was 12, and her basic instinct to just want to be ignored by most of the planet makes for a long internal struggle.

While the content of this novel includes topics and themes not unusual in YA fiction, such as abuse, alcohol and drug use, sex, and relationships, it is stylistic approach that King takes that really makes the novel worth reading. While the majority of the novel is told from Vera's perspective, there are occasional chapters from three other perspectives: Charlie, Ken Dietz (Vera's dad), and the Pagoda show more (the large landmark in Vera's small town). These alternative viewpoints make the novel more interesting, providing insights into the major characters that surround Vera. Ken's flowcharts and the Pagoda's sarcasm are also just delightful in general. But while the mystery of the secrets Vera knows about Charlie's death, it is the discovery of why Vera and Charlie's relationship disintegrated that truly drives the novel and makes it worth reading. An intriguing exploration of relationships, identity, and destiny. show less

Oh my God what a heartbreaker! I can't believe it took me this long to read this stunner. I will definitely recommend this to students strongly in the coming year. Vera is trying to live under the radar in her town of Mount Pitts, hoping no one will find out about her mother. Her best friend has just died under suspicious circumstances and details about something related to his death casts a pall over his memory. Even though Vera hadn't really spoken to him in a few months before his death, she keeps seeing thousands of Charlies imploring her to set things right. She had fallen in love with him even though her father warned her about getting involved with him, or any boy. Told in chapters from a variety of different perspectives, even show more the Pagoda's (it's a long story), this book mixes humor with heartbreaking details that bring true depth to all of the characters. show less