[R] Challenger Deep, by: Neal Shusterman

Challenger Deep
by: Neal Shusterman

★★★★★

Caden Bosch is on a ship that's headed for the deepest point on Earth: Challenger Deep, the southern part of the Marianas Trench.

Caden Bosch is a brilliant high school student whose friends are starting to notice his odd behavior.

Caden Bosch is designated the ship's artist in residence, to document the journey with images.

Caden Bosch pretends to join the school track team but spends his days walking for miles, absorbed by the thoughts in his head.

Caden Bosch is split between his allegiance to the captain and the allure of mutiny.

Caden Bosch is torn.

I was waiting for my professor of Advanced Composition to give me the guidelines of her paper (which was a book review), but there have been some strikes in my uni, and I still don't have the guidelines. So, I'll do the review however I like it and then I will edit a bit for her paper. I just need to review this book ASAP.

"You'll find in life, Caden, that many decisions are made by morons in high places."

I read this book awhile ago and still haunts my head. I challenged myself to read this book for this year (for the Ultimate Reading Challenge of PopSugar). So, I read it. I struggled with it. I highlighted so many things in the book. And I'm damn sure that I might read it again in another time. I have never read a book of him and I really think I start with the correct foot. This book was beyond my wildest dreams.

What do I see when I close my eyes? I see beyond darkness, and it is immeasurably grand both above me and below.

Caden Bosch is torn.
You can say that the book is telling two different stories that come together in one and that they are told in three points of view. There are chapters in first person, Caden speaking, and other chapters in second and third person. It worked really, really well. You got the reality of what's happening and the fantasy. The reality is that Caden is struggling with a mental illness and the fantasy is that he is in a boat searching for the Challenger Deep. The thing is that in both "realities", he doesn't really know what's happening or either something is real or not. He just feels.

So what happens when your universe begins to get off balance, and you don't have any experience with bringing it back to center? All you can do is fight a losing battle, waiting for those walls to colapse, and your life to become one huge mystery ashtray.

I really, really don't want to spoil you anything because that's the charm of the book and I will not. But if my feelings of the book spoil you something... I'm sorry.

Dead kids are put on pedestals, but mentally ill kids get hidden under the rug.

The whole time I was reading the book, I was lost. Well, except the last chapters. Every times that something clicked between Caden's reality and fantasy, I would go nuts in knowledge. Is that moment when you realize that a character from the boat is someone real from his reality, that is the moment I would open my eyes and say fuck yes.

...and it occurs to me that the dark must be in love with the light. Yet one must always kill each other.

The books is NOT a happy one. Is a book that brings sadness, but that at the end gives you hope. That everything might be wrong, but this too shall pass. That problems are not a constant, but hope is. That you are certainly bigger than your problems and the universe is here to help you. That no one is alone and that everyone can get help. To learn to live with mental illness. To open the eyes to those who thinks that people with mental illness are outcasts. Fuck them! They are just like us. They should be treated like someone who has diabetes or someone color blind... normal.

"What they do here has no bearing on the price of tea in China," he finally says. "Or for that matter, the price of china in Turkey."

As you can see, I love the book and I would recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. It doesn't only show us, it teach us. And this is something that anyone should learn. Promise me to read it?

And I think, if thoughts are worth a penny, how much less promises must be worth. Especially the ones you're likely to break.