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| Book #23 of 2010 |
| Title: Fade to Black |
| Author: Alex Flinn |
| Publisher: HarperTeen |
| Pub Date: April 12, 2005 |
| Grade: B |
| Comments: Alex doesn’t have it easy; an assembly at his new school about dealing with someone with AIDS outed his HIV positive status before he had even arrived. He can deal with the looks, the threatening letters and his lack of friends, but the harassment comes to a head when someone attacks his car, smashing his windows in with a baseball bat while he is driving, leaving him injured and in the hospital. The only witness to the attack is Daria, a girl with Downs Syndrome who has a crush on Alex since he is the only person at school who is nice to her. Daria identifies Clinton as the attacker. When the police question him, Clinton admits to not liking Clinton but maintains he is not responsible for the attack.
I didn’t like this book as much as I expected to. I loved Breathing Underwater, but this was less successful for me. I couldn’t believe that in 2005, an entire school of students could be so misinformed about HIV. A few idiots, sure. But the fact that not one student knew that just talking to Alex wasn’t a way to catch his disease stuck out to me as improbable. Jennifer volunteers at a hospital, wants to become a doctor someday, and still has reservations? Maybe it’s because in the past five years enough has changed that people wouldn’t assume Alex was gay, and if they did, it wouldn’t be as big of a deal.
The two things I liked best about the book were the revelation of how Alex caught the disease – which made a lot of sense and felt completely authentic - and the character Clinton – because even though he is Grade A awful throughout the book, his narration is so honest I could really believe in him even as I hated him. Flinn has a talent for creating unlikable characters that you ultimately can feel for. Alex’s introspection about his disease and his mortality were also remarkable.
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