Book review
Wow! Just wow — this is the first new five-star review I’ve given since Catcher in the Rye, which I read nearly nine months ago. Sure, I gave out a few 4.5-star reviews since then, which I rounded up to 5, but that’s beside the point. Holes was simply beautiful in every way!
With the exception of perhaps Harry Potter 6 and 7, Holes is undoubtedly the best children’s book that I have ever read. I don’t even know where to begin in describing everything that I loved about the book. To start, I adored all the fun, ingenuitive connections made between the many characters of the novel (between both the main present-day characters of and character that existed over a hundred years before Stanley’s story took place); I love how all the seemingly random pieces connect together so beautifully by the end of the narrative — ultimately linking the stories of Sam, Kissing Kate Barlow, Eliot Yellnats, Madame Zeroni, Stanley Yelnats I, Stanley Yelnats IV, and Zero. The constant twists, which Sachar uses to establish these connections, struck me as jarringly brilliant.
I was also intrigued by the large cast of zany, well-developed characters. I think my favorite character was Hector (Zero). He was just such a relatable character that your heart breaks for increasingly as you find out more and more of his tragic backstory. I found his intuitive understanding of math (even though he didn’t’ realize he was doing math) fascinating. I also adored Kissing Kate Barlow. My mind was blown by how effortlessly Sachar gets the reader to identify with — and perhaps even root for — a mass murderer. Just like so many of the other characters, she seems cruel on the surface, but she is not purely a bad person. She became the kind of hardened person that she did out of tragic life experiences and out of a righteous sense of anger at an unjust world. But Sachar’s more one-dimensionally villainous characters are fantastic, as well. Mr. Pandaski made my skin crawl whenever he opened his mouth. He pretends to be the “nice guy,” believing in the camper’s potential and looking out for their best interests, while simultaneously breading Zero every chance he gets. Mr. Sir’s stoicism and grouchiness never failed to make me laugh. And the Warden is the more classic villain that you love to hate — but even she carries a complex backstory that helps the reader to understand why she became the kind of cold woman that she did. Sachar clearly wants his readers to look beyond the outer shell of a person and realize that everyone has life experiences that have caused them to become the kind of person they have become. Some people, like the Warden, might become truly wicked–but they were not simply born evil.
As an aside, I also want to mention that I was blown away by how similar the book is to the movie. The film neither took away nor added almost anything from the book. Seriously, the only noteworthy difference is that Stanley is overweight in the novel, while he’s as thin as a rail in the movie — which isn’t too big a change at all. A lot of the book-scenes were directly translated directly into the film, line for line. I cannot think of a book to movie translation that seemed so doggone faithful.
So, was there anything about Holes that I disliked? Honestly, the only thing I can say is that I have a minor onion-phobia — so reading about two people surviving off onions disgusted me.
I adored Holes. It emanates a mere sense of zany fun that is lacking in most children’s book. The novel is deeply creative, engaging, and insightful. It has probably become a top 10 book for me–or at least top 15.
- Goodreads rating – 3.99
- REVIEW – Squire Goranson-Whitney