Review: Tell the Story to it's End by Simon

Tell the Story to its End by Simon P. Clark
Publisher: St.Martins Griffin
Release Date: October 20th, 2015
Purchase: Amazon

In this beautiful, haunting debut, a boy is whisked away to the country in the wake of a scandal, and finds a captivating creature in the attic whose attention comes at a sinister price.

"Tell the story to its end," says Eren with a grin.
His yellow eyes are glowing like embers in the night.
"When I reach the end," I say, "what happens? You'll have the whole story."
"Hmm," he says, looking at me and licking his lips with a dry, grey tongue. "What happens then? Why don't we find out?"

People are keeping secrets from Oli. His mum has brought him to stay with his aunt and uncle in the countryside, but nobody will tell him why his dad where his father is. Why isn't he with them? Has something happened? Oli has a hundred questions, and only an old, empty house in the middle of an ancient forest for answers. But then he finds a secret of his own: there is a creature that lives in the attic…

Eren is not human.
Eren is hungry for stories.
Eren has been waiting for him.

Sharing his stories with Eren, Oli starts to make sense of what’s happening downstairs with his family. But what if it’s a trap? Soon, Oli must make a choice: learn the truth—or abandon himself to Eren’s world, forever.

Reminiscent of SKELLIG by David Almond and A MONSTER CALLS by Patrick Ness, EREN is richly atmospheric, moving, unsettleing, and told in gorgeous prose. A modern classic in the making.

My thoughts:
This was certainly a strange little book.  The summary sounded really interesting and I thought hmm this could be super creepy.  If I look at it one way it is creepy, but if I look the other way I just don't get it.

Oli and his mom have moved to the countryside for the summer and are hoping Oli's dad will join them sooner rather than later.  What Oli finds out though is that the reason behind the move isn't a good one and he seeks solace in the attic with a monster who just wants to hear Oli's stories.  Or so he thinks.

So the thought of a story eating monster intrigued me.  I knew this monster would only grow stronger with every story he was told and become creepier and creepier. I was right to a point, but I found out that creepier came with a side of strange.

I think what threw me off was that this book talked in riddles and in circles.  At some points it even sounded like a deranged Cat in the Hat from a Dr. Seuss book.  I kept tripping up on the strange lingo and punctuation.  I didn't know going in that this was written from an English author and normally I don't have any trouble settling in to the Englishesque storylines, but man this one really threw me for a loop. I've never seen so many exclamations points and "yes"'s thrown around.  I think the story probably would have still been a strange one but adding in the strangeness of the writers flow just increased the oddness.

The story itself was yes strange, but I felt bad for Oli.  He was kept in the dark about his father and then when the cat jumped out of the bag (a reference you will totally get if you read the book) he fell apart.  He didn't understand why things were kept from him and I have to agree.  The adults were not very adult and didn't see what was happening to Oli.  I ended up being frustrated and when the end happened I wanted more from the adults point of view.  I wanted to know what they thought and what they were doing.

One extra chapter would have been great because the story is left so open and well I just didn't get it.  I got the scary part of it, but I didn't get the overall point.  Well I guess that's not true I got what happened I guess it's more accurate to say I didn't get all the why's of each character.  If someone could please let me know all the why's I would be forever grateful.

2 snowflakes