Slipping
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Overview
Michael Kimmel is an average eighth grader who's too short to be good at basketball and too unmotivated to care about school. When the grandfather he barely knows suddenly dies, Michael can’t understand why his dad seems so detached. But when the ghost of his grandfather contacts Michael and begins to show him scenes from the past, Michael suspects it’s up to him to right the wrongs between his father and grandfather – before he himself becomes trapped in the river of the dead.
Synopsis
Michael has enough problems to deal with: low grades, parents that compare him to his perfect sister, and a best friend who gets more distant with each school day. So he can’t really focus on his grandpa’s death. Besides, how do you grieve for someone you barely knew? But then Michael starts seeing his grandpa’s face in the mirror—and he seems to be reaching out for help. Soon, Michael is slipping out of his body and into his grandpa’s memories—wading in the river between the living and the dead. As the slips become longer and more frequent, Michael struggles to resolve the feud that ripped his family apart. But each time he visits the world of the dead, it becomes harder to return. He will have to rely on an unlikely group of friends to keep from slipping forever. . . .
Publishers Weekly
In most ghost stories, a house is haunted, or perhaps an object, the echoes of past tragedies captured in musty rooms or a threadbare doll. In Bell's intense if uneven debut novel, however, the haunting occupies not so much a physical space as the broken bonds between fathers and sons.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Kimmel's family is wealthy, but hardly comfortable, and in many senses undernourished. Facing an upcoming ballet recital, his older sister, Julia, is too nervous to eat-fearing that her daughter is anorexic, their mother stops eating in turn. Their overworked father thrives on protein shakes, perfectionism and canceling the family vacations at the last minute. Michael retreats from all this stress into the rule-governed chaos of video games.
Then one night Michael's father comes home with cracks in his armor: "My dad is someone who is never late, who is never wrong, who is never sad. But just then, he looked like he was maybe all three."
Michael's grandfather is dead.
The family's reaction is strangely muted. Michael hasn't seen his grandfather for years, since a break between father and son that he's too young to remember. But as in any ghost story, the past isn't dead. Soon the grandfather's spirit is haunting Michael, drawing him into a demimonde of the restless dead, where family history (and family secrets) are revealed.
Being haunted is not healthy. Michael returns from these "slips" shaken and half-frozen. Without meaning to, his grandfather is sucking the life out of him.
Ghosts, of course, always want something-the trick is finding out what. Ghost stories are puzzles, games played to uncover a hidden past. So it feels both inventiveand logical when Michael approaches his haunting like a new video game.
He collects an assortment of allies: his former best friend, his big sister, a bully, a paranormal geek and a professional psychic. He learns the rules of the afterlife, and braves deeper levels of his grandfather's memories. Ultimately, Michael discovers the roots of his unhappy relationship with his own father, and the truth of what the ghost is looking for.
Bell's spare prose evokes a tightly wound family, and elegantly renders the world from Michael's gloomy, nescient point of view. But the book's paranormal set pieces often feel muddled-the mechanics and geography of the demimonde don't become clearer as the game is played. (There's a River of the Dead, and tunnels under the river, I think.) But the story succeeds in that its paranormal dynamics echo the real world's. Breaks between father and son, parent and child, do play out in the next generation.
Families really are haunted by the past, in a way that houses are not.
Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Uglies, Midnighters and Peeps series. His next book is Bogus to Bubbly, an Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies (Simon Pulse, Oct.).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Editorials
Publishers Weekly
In most ghost stories, a house is haunted, or perhaps an object, the echoes of past tragedies captured in musty rooms or a threadbare doll. In Bell's intense if uneven debut novel, however, the haunting occupies not so much a physical space as the broken bonds between fathers and sons.
Thirteen-year-old Michael Kimmel's family is wealthy, but hardly comfortable, and in many senses undernourished. Facing an upcoming ballet recital, his older sister, Julia, is too nervous to eat-fearing that her daughter is anorexic, their mother stops eating in turn. Their overworked father thrives on protein shakes, perfectionism and canceling the family vacations at the last minute. Michael retreats from all this stress into the rule-governed chaos of video games.
Then one night Michael's father comes home with cracks in his armor: "My dad is someone who is never late, who is never wrong, who is never sad. But just then, he looked like he was maybe all three."
Michael's grandfather is dead.
The family's reaction is strangely muted. Michael hasn't seen his grandfather for years, since a break between father and son that he's too young to remember. But as in any ghost story, the past isn't dead. Soon the grandfather's spirit is haunting Michael, drawing him into a demimonde of the restless dead, where family history (and family secrets) are revealed.
Being haunted is not healthy. Michael returns from these "slips" shaken and half-frozen. Without meaning to, his grandfather is sucking the life out of him.
Ghosts, of course, always want something-the trick is finding out what. Ghost stories are puzzles, games played to uncover a hidden past. So it feels both inventiveand logical when Michael approaches his haunting like a new video game.
He collects an assortment of allies: his former best friend, his big sister, a bully, a paranormal geek and a professional psychic. He learns the rules of the afterlife, and braves deeper levels of his grandfather's memories. Ultimately, Michael discovers the roots of his unhappy relationship with his own father, and the truth of what the ghost is looking for.
Bell's spare prose evokes a tightly wound family, and elegantly renders the world from Michael's gloomy, nescient point of view. But the book's paranormal set pieces often feel muddled-the mechanics and geography of the demimonde don't become clearer as the game is played. (There's a River of the Dead, and tunnels under the river, I think.) But the story succeeds in that its paranormal dynamics echo the real world's. Breaks between father and son, parent and child, do play out in the next generation.
Families really are haunted by the past, in a way that houses are not.
Scott Westerfeld is the author of the Uglies, Midnighters and Peeps series. His next book is Bogus to Bubbly, an Insider's Guide to the World of Uglies (Simon Pulse, Oct.).
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.Children's Literature -
Michael Kimmel was never close to his grandfather, but when he hears about his grandfather's death something strange starts happening. Michael seems to know things he couldn't know, but things that his grandfather would know. He startles his father by speaking rudely to him, rudely in the way that his grandfather had spoken to him years before. Michael upsets a young classmate, Ewan, who has recently lost his own father. Then something really odd happens to Michael; he slips out of his reality and into the world of his grandfather's past. A basketball game puts Michael into the trenches of the World War with abilities that Michael never realized he had. Finally unable to keep these occurrences to himself, Michael confides in Ewan, who already knows about the phenomenon of "slipping," of entering into the river of the dead. But this is not a place the living can remain for long and it starts to feel to Michael as though he might not be able to return to his own life. With the help of his friends and his older sister, Michael seeks to help his grandfather find the peace that keeps them both slipping through time. Middle school readers will be interested in the concept as the novel speculates on what happens when someone dies. Reviewer: Janis Flint-FergusonSchool Library Journal
Gr 6-8
When his estranged grandfather passes away, Michael Kimmel, 13, begins to feel a weird eeriness that develops into moments where he "slips" into the world of his grandfather's memories. He begins to communicate with the deceased, learning more about his sad and dysfunctional relationship with his son, Michael's father. Each "slip" into the dead man's mind brings the teen dangerously closer to his own passing as he becomes increasingly unable to "slip" out of "the river of the dead." First-time author Bell has created a gripping supernatural fantasy and psychological drama, blending family controversies with coming-of-age issues of peer acceptance and success. Michael's concerns over his height and abilities on the basketball court are continually overshadowed by his own strained relationship with his demanding father. Michael is a well-developed protagonist balanced by four supporting roles: his older sister, Julia; best friend, Gus; and new friends Ewan and Trip, fleshing out a teen-centered story with adults clearly taking an ancillary role. Persuasive descriptions of Michael's physical pain and psychological exertions climax in a vivid death-defying scene. An interesting short addendum on the fact or fictions of "time slips" will keep readers wondering about the plausibility of a loved-one's connection between death and life.-Rita Soltan, Youth Services Consultant, West Bloomfield, MI