I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier

#34 in my book challenge for the year, and #10 in my summer reading challenge was I Am the Cheese by Robert Cormier. One of the classics of the YA genre, this novel reminded me that really good YA should be a good read at any age. This was a great mystery novel, skillfully written. It had three main narrative threads: a story told in first person, present tense; transcripts of interviews from an unspecified time; and interspersed narratives to flesh out the interviews, told in third person past tense. These three weave together until they finally meet up (or do they?) at the end. The ending gives credit to the reader by leaving the interpretation open. My sister Sydney told me that when she read the book for a class in grade school, she’d called the phone number that’s listed toward the end of the book; it was Cormier’s own. She got to discuss the book and its ending with the author himself.

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