Dope Sick

Walter Dean Myers' DOPE SICK does an excellent job of drawing you into Lil J's dangerous and disjointed world of punk dope dealers in New York City. The language, while harsh, isn't so crude as to be off-putting (or incomprehensible) to this suburban white reader and the characters are multi-faceted and intriguing. I even had sympathy for Lil J himself, as he (with the help of Kelly and his magical fast forward/rewind remote control) gets a look at decisions he has made in the past (and perhaps will make in the future.) An intriguing and fast read. I subtracted one star for an ending that is without any sort of closure (for me at least.) After reading the final paragraphs, I had no sense of what Myers was trying to say, show or tell as far as Lil J and the decisions he must now make.

Dope Sick opens in high drama: Harlem teenager Lil J has hurt -- maybe broken -- his arm during a drug run gone bad, and he's deciding whether to surrender to the cops down the block or hide in a nearby abandoned building. He decides on the building, and in a twist that totally hooks the reader, discovers Kelly, a guy whose TV plays a movie of Lil J's life -- now the current moment, now fast-forwarding to a future where Lil J is caught by the police and puts his gun to his own head. This present and future are so different from what Lil J has imagined for himself and for his addicted mother, that when Kelly offers to rewind the movie -- to give Lil J a do-over if he can identify where he took the wrong turn in life -- Lil J is hooked by the possibilities, too. Dope Sick is a quick, intense read, and Lil J narrates in a street voice that's effectively developed through credible language and speech patterns rather than intrusive dialect.

Lil J is running away from his problems. His alcoholic mother can't seem to get straight, he can't find a decent job, and now the cops are breathing down his neck. A drug deal has gone sour, and Lil J finds himself holed up in an abandoned crack house, wounded and afraid. He meets Kelly, a young man who asks a lot of questions and wields a television remote control. The entire situation doesn't make sense to Lil J, and things really start getting crazy when Kelly begins to play segments of Lil J's life on the TV screen. "If you could do it all over again, and change something, what would it be?," Kelly asks Lil J. Lil J sifts through his memories, attempting to pinpoint the moment in his life that changed him forever. Many secrets are unearthed and Lil J comes to the realization that it wasn't just one thing; it was all the little things that added up and multiplied into this mess he calls his life. Lil J is searching for redemption, but can he find it in time - and does he even deserve it? Walter Dean Myers is a masterful storyteller who takes ideas about urban life and morphs them into something that is truly original and unexpected. His ability to use surrealism in a very real, life-altering situation shows that you can make a point without shoving it in your face. DOPE SICK is an excellent piece of writing that will keep you questioning until the end.......and after. Reviewed by: LadyJay

Gold Star Award Winner! Lil J is running away from his problems. His alcoholic mother can't seem to get straight, he can't find a decent job, and now the cops are breathing down his neck. A drug deal has gone sour, and Lil J finds himself holed up in an abandoned crack house, wounded and afraid. He meets Kelly, a young man who asks a lot of questions and wields a television remote control. The entire situation doesn't make sense to Lil J, and things really start getting crazy when Kelly begins to play segments of Lil J's life on the TV screen. "If you could do it all over again, and change something, what would it be?," Kelly asks Lil J. Lil J sifts through his memories, attempting to pinpoint the moment in his life that changed him forever. Many secrets are unearthed and Lil J comes to the realization that it wasn't just one thing; it was all the little things that added up and multiplied into this mess he calls his life. Lil J is searching for redemption, but can he find it in time - and does he even deserve it? Walter Dean Myers is a masterful storyteller who takes ideas about urban life and morphs them into something that is truly original and unexpected. His ability to use surrealism in a very real, life-altering situation shows that you can make a point without shoving it in your face. DOPE SICK is an excellent piece of writing that will keep you questioning until the end.......and after. Reviewed by: LadyJay

I was privileged to read an advance copy of Walter Dean Myers' new book Dope Sick, and let me say, simply: this is a good book. It was nicely crafted for its intended audience, well-written, intriguing and thought-provoking without being too preachy or overly complex. It had a science fiction flair in a realistic story, and I love when authors do that well. The main character, Lil J, was perfectly rendered, and his narrator's voice seemed spot on to me, though I admit some ignorance as to popular street slang of today -- I live in a small town in Oregon, which is not exactly the 'hood. I know that it sounded genuine to my dull ears, and I think it would seem the same to young men who read the book, so I will be recommending this book to them. The story was interesting, though I know the ending will not satisfy many readers -- the lady or the tiger? I thought it was great, since the book's theme is how hard it is to pinpoint the moment when things start to go wrong in one's life. The story picks up as Lil J is running from the police, having been involved in a drug deal that went bad and ended up with the shooting of an undercover cop; J (whose full name is Jeremy Dance, and that name almost gave me goosebumps, it was so good) runs into a building that seems abandoned but isn't. On an upper story, J finds a mysterious figure named Kelly, watching TV. This TV can show J's life, past, present, and possible future, and Kelly shows J exactly where he is headed and what awaits him there -- and J doesn't like what he sees. The rest of the book is a series of flashbacks, laced into J's conversation with Kelly, which (very nicely) never loses sight of J's current situation and its seriousness, as the police are searching for J and he is already being tried and convicted by the popular media. Through the flashbacks, we see what has happened to J to make him the way he is, as Kelly keeps asking him what he would like to change about his life, what single event or single day he would like to change in order to get out of the situation he finds himself in now. And several possibilities occur to J, and are described as he and Kelly watch them on the strange TV; most of them seem reasonable choices for the turning point, the watershed moment when everything started to go wrong, and the overall impression the reader gets is sadness -- because a lot in this young man's life has gone wrong. But the climax of the book comes, I think, when J tells Kelly, "Everything that's me ain't all my fault," and Kelly responds, "That's the deal. You got to find a way to make your life all your fault." That, I thought, was a brilliant line, and a brilliant message very well realized in this book.