Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: SOUTH OF HEAVEN: WELCOME TO HIGH SCHOOL AT THE END OF 20TH CENTURY by Thomas French ISBN: 0-671-89801-9 Publisher: Pocket Pub. Date: 01 March, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: South of Heaven
Comment: This book was about high school at the end of the twentieth century. A Largo High there's a program called GOALS, where teachers reach out to the students that try to escape school. It describes several students that attend Largo High and what they do outside of school. This book is great when it came to details.
My favorite character in this book was Christine Younskevicius, everybody calls her YY. She had three close friends that she was always hanging out with. YY was very involved in school, and everybody knew her at Largo High.
I enjoyed reading this book. It was long but worth it. When I was reading it, it felt like I was there watching or listening to what was happening. Those are the kind of books that I personally enjoy reading. This book caught my attention from the very beginning.
Rating: 4
Summary: Pretty good, pretty accurate
Comment: I am a 1993 graduate of Lakewood High School in Pinellas County, Florida -- same county as Largo, with which I was fairly familiar during my three years at Lakewood. South of Heaven was initially appealing simply because I knew (sometimes tangentially, sometimes directly) a few of the people in the book, and because Tom French was a minor celebrity in our high school journalism class. It was therefore many years before I could read it with some equanimity and objectivity.
Ten years down the road, I have no idea if French's picture of high school is still accurate. What I do know is that it was accurate in 1992. French manages to convey well the social balkanization and creeping despair that infected Pinellas County schools in those days. He also seizes quite well upon the social archetypes of those schools, and does an admirable job of portraying them with sympathy despite their many fault. One certainly feels that French is an astute observer of social interactions: he zeros in on the crucial doings of Largo's social interplay, without losing the forest for the trees.
The book gets four stars for two reasons: first, the writing is journalistic rather than novelistic. French doesn't quite lose the "newspaper tone" in South of Heaven; it does not translate so easily from serial to book as did, say, Mark Bowden's Black Hawk Down. It's hardly a fatal flaw, just a nagging one. The second shortcoming is French's analysis of what he sees: there is little, and what little there is is simplistic and unconvincing (anyone familiar with the dreary and pointless GOALS program for failing students in Pinellas could hardly advocate throwing more money into that sinkhole). He is much more of a reporter than an editorializer. To his credit, he seems to understand this, and mostly sticks to reporting.
It's a good book, a good read, and a story that approaches in poignance the heights of another classic piece of high school reportage, Friday Night Lights. Tom French is to be congratulated.
Rating: 5
Summary: I am a graduate of the 1990 class from Largo High School
Comment: This is one of the best descriptions of high school life i have ever read... being a part of the class that helped make this book possible was also an incredible experience.
 |
Title: Unanswered Cries : A True Story Of Friends, Neighbors, And Murder In A Small Town by Thomas French ISBN: 0312926456 Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks Pub. Date: 15 March, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.50 |
 |
Title: Writing for Story: Craft Secrets of Dramatic Nonfiction by a Two-Time Pulitzer Prize Winner by Jon Franklin ISBN: 0452272955 Publisher: Plume Books Pub. Date: 01 September, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
