Review: burned
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burned, by Ellen Hopkins, is a novel in poetry about a girl who finds love and then loses everything.
Waiting on Wednesday (38)
1 hour ago
Sunday, February 19, 2006
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6 comments:
Hi Kimberly,
First, let me thank you for reading BURNED and your thoughtful comments. I feel the need to respond, however, to some of your comments.
First, I am not anti-religion. In fact, I go to church (I happen to be Lutheran) regulary, and even sing in the choir. However, every religion can be home to fundamentalist extremists. Pattyn's family happens to be an extreme example of the LDS faith. Still, my personal feeling is that any religion that considers women "inferior" deserves a hard look. I worked with a great, great granddaughter of Joseph Smith (founder of the LDS church), who left the church in her early 20s because of concerns like Pattyn's.
Truly, I didn't start out to write BURNED about any religion, but about a girl who winds up in a Columbine type situation. I needed to bring her to a place where that was the only option she could consider. As I wrote the character, she happened to resemble a Mormon girl (a friend of my youngest daughter) who I knew. I visited her apartment. She and her boyfriend had stockpiled weapons and explosives against the coming "End of Times" preached by her church.
You might visit the website exmormon.com to see other examples of extremist Mormon viewpoints.
As for the nuclear issues, these are very real to us here in Nevada. Caliente is a real place, with real ranchers facing trainloads of nuclear waste being shipped down their canyons. Downwinders are also real. My editor allowed me to keep those references because I don't want those stories to die. It's important for future generations to understand that it's not only okay, but their duty, to question authority if it seems wrong.
If a teacher or a cop or a politician does something that isn't right, you must speak up.
Finally, yes, I do write problem novels that don't offer pat, happy endings. Life doesn't always offer happy endings, either. There are enough light romances out there. I want to explore the things that can bring people to unhappy endings, mostly to let readers know this isn't the way they want to end up.
I hope you'll go back and reread BURNED, with these things in mind.
Thanks again for being a reader, not to mention a commentator. You rock.
I got on this web sight to find out about this book. When I read Ellen Hopkins comments, I am not sure I want to read anything by a writer that is so ill-informed on something she is writing about. Did she do any research? I think not. Try a better author.
In response to the anonymous poster above, it strikes me as very ironic that you would base your judgments about the author and the book without even reading the book yourself. Isn't that exactly what you accuse Hopkins of being, ill-informed? It's also telling that Hopkins responded in a thorough, thoughtful manner to Kimberly's blog, and you stuck to generalizations about Hopkins supposedly being ill-informed. Perhaps you should take a cue from Hopkins and actually explain yourself. Educate us. Inform us.
I had the pleasure of meeting Ellen Hopkins a little while ago, and she told us the story behind Burned, so it was with that in mind that I read the book this past week.
While I agree with you that it was hard, in those final pages, to watch Pattyn devolve so quickly from lovable if damaged, budding young woman to hopeless, violent shell of a human... isn't that so often what happens? I frequently read comments in the news about serial killers or people with violent outbursts from their neighbours, friends and family saying "we just didn't see this coming... he/she was such a nice person".
I appreciated (although I didn't enjoy) watching Pattyn's downward spiral. I didn't feel there was much that was particularly "conspiratorial"- anyone who has been to high school or around teenagers knows that gossip spreads like wildfire, and news like "the mormon girl is pregnant" would be a particularly damaging sweep. Having grown up in a town that was 20% mormon, I can imagine that if such a rumour was overheard (and it was by the bitchy popular girls, not her mormon friends), everyone would hear about it within a day. And inevitably in a small town, such a rumour spreads beyond the walls of the school and in Pattyn's case, that can ultimately lead to a disastrous result.
Sadly, Pattyn's story is not so far from reality. Just recently, a frighteningly similar story enacted itself in Texas with a strict Baptist family. The circumstances were different, but it is amazing (and horrifying) to see how in the "now or never" immediate and extreme world view of so many teenagers, violence can erupt so quickly. I think Ellen Hopkins did a marvelous job of taking us on that ride, even though in the end, we did indeed feel hurt, betrayed and confused, just as we would if someone we cared about made such bad decisions for misguided intentions.
Thank you!!
I understood everything until the part about her plan and sitting on the overpass and all!!
I was like ok is she just planning on killing them but jump off and end her own life instead?
I just didn't no what happened but now your summary cleared it all up and I'm much happier about the ending!!!
And yes the bomb stuff was randomly thrown in there. Maybe someone offered her money to add it to her book!!! lmao!
This is one of my favorite books and my favorite author. Of course what she writes about will upset a few people but the stories are so true and real
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