YA Book Review: The House of the Scorpion

The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Complex and rich, Nancy Farmer's The House of the Scorpion grows from the family history created by drug lord, El Patron--a character mirroring the often bizarre machinations in characters spawned by Oscar Wilde or Nathanial Hawthorne.

El Patron, the most powerful man in the world, builds an empire on opium, slavery, augmented reality, and cruelty. He keeps himself alive for 148 years by harvesting organs from from clones created from his DNA.

The story follows the life of Matteo (called Matt), created from El Patron's DNA. We follow Matt's journey because unlike the other El Patron clones, his brains were kept intact. He was not drugged and operated into idiocy. He was not to be touched or harmed...yet, he was loathed by most around him.

It seems clones are akin to mongrels...not human. Dirty and without souls, many fear them and cringe when one is near. All, except for Matt, are kept away from humans...some strapped in hospitals or animal pens.

Beyond the main characters and those with the most text devoted to them, Farmer excels at building character. Many characters experience emotional highs and lows, moments of humanity, and moments of darkness--darkness emerging from fear, revenge, greed and several other of humanity's frailties.

In this excerpt, we see a bit of Farmer's ability to use artful dialogue to develop character. You may not know this novel, but we know a little something of Matt, Fidelito, and Consuela in just this snippet of text:


Matt blinked away tears. "How can anyone celebrate death?"
"Because it's part of us," Consuela said softly.
"Mi abuelita said I musn't be afraid of skeletons because I carry my own around inside," said Fidelito. "She told me to feel my ribs and make friends with them."
"Your grandmother was very wise," said Consuela.

The writing is so strong in The House of the Scorpion, that novels such as Ishiguro's Never Let Me Go, M.T. Anderson's Feed, and Lowry's The Giver came to my mind as I read.

The plausibility of the circumstances surrounding the novel also engaged me--I didn't have to suspend belief because so much of the tale is woven on morality. Gosh, so many opportunities exist for reflection and conversation on morality, science and nature, as well as what makes us human. I love the opportunities presented here for great discussion and most certainly clean, healthy, challenging thought.

I can imagine adolescents having many questions--often beginning with "Why did he/she..."--and I do love that about this book.

Decorated like a naval hero (National Book Award; Newberry Honor Book; Printz Honor Book; ALA Notable Children's Book; ALA Best Book for Young Adults; among others) The House of the Scorpion once passed from hand to hand in my classroom (only a few years ago). Now, with so many other choices flooding the market and our classrooms, great books sometimes find themselves lost in the boneyard.

It is up to teachers, and teachers who are great readers, to keep great contemporary literature in the
hands of adolescents. Please consider adding this to your classroom library and do a book talk on this gem to keep it alive in the hands of this generation of readers.




View all my reviews

Book Review: An Audience for Einstein

Rooted in a strong morality tale, Mark Wakely's An Audience for Einstein represents a great introduction into science fiction--especially for teens.

While the writing feels stiff and unpolished in some places, and characters narrate life a little too much for my taste, the novel speculates what if we could save the memories and knowledge of one dying person at the expense of the future of another (in this case, an eleven-year old)?

Professor Dorning creates a method to extract the knowledge from the brain of one of the world's leading scientists, Percival Marlowe, and plants it inside the brain of a impoverished adolescent, Miguel Sanchez.  Dorning lies, hides all of the facts, and manipulates two lives because he judges Marlowe's life as more valuable than Miguel's.

Miguel was only a poor Hispanic who didn't go to school--what was the value of his life?  He panhandled with other teens while his mother struggled in rehab--what was the value of his life?

There are a couple of encounters that feel like loose ends:

a. a doctor in a hospital suspects Miguel might be in danger with Dorning, but never follows it up
b. child and youth services investigates Dorning, catches him in his lies, and he walks

Some moments feel contrived:

Flat characters ring of uninteresting stereotypes:

a. Miguel's panhandling friends
b. two rookie police officers laugh and mock the maid who reports the suspected child abuse

Beyond the lack of warmth, choppy writing, and minor flaws in structure,  An Audience for Einstein is a good story.  Some passages even rise and capture the reader's fascination with some really fine moments:

a. the title of the novel comes when Percival Marlow, now "reborn" as the child Miguel, stumbles into an opportunity to lecture a university class for a few moments...the real professor of the class patronizes him and calls the class, "an audience for Einstein"...

b. Miguel, an underprivileged youth, playing in the ocean for the first time in his life, tumbles beneath a wave and finds himself sucked deeper out to sea--unable to swim, his life is in danger

The core of the story cycles between the awareness of Percival Marlow back and forth with the awareness of Miguel Sanchez--they share Miguel's body, but the threat looms that Marlow's brain will take over...vanquishing Miguel's brain and presence forever.  Miguel will soon be dormant, never to return.

Even though this will not be the best written book your students will read, many will enjoy the moral implications it is built upon.  An Audience for Einstein is a solid choice for any middle school classroom library.  I'm looking forward to reading some Writer's Notebook entries or student reflections once they find this book on my shelves.

artist Farley Aguilar