Summer of Stephen
Title: Apt Pupil
Publishing Date: 1982 Length: 182 pages Start Date: May 1, 2018 End Date: May 15, 2018 I really enjoyed this story, and I’m honestly a little worried about what that might say about me. Apt Pupil is the story of a Nazi who ran away from the horrors of everything he’d done, changed his name, and is now hiding out in America. He’s managed to keep his past a secret well into old age. Until the day a young boy shows up on his front steps, threatening to expose him. What does the boy want in exchange for his silence? To hear all of the gory details of what it’s like to torture and kill someone. Despite his misgivings, the old man agrees to the arrangement. Over the next several months, the boy shows up at his house and listens, completely entranced as the man tells about all of the atrocities he committed. Eventually the two develop a deep mistrust for one another and claim to have given detailed letters to close friends in the event that anything should happen to them. The horrific stories seem to have an almost hypnotic effective on both characters and they each embark on their own “extracurricular activities” in order to feel a thrill. Without realizing the other is doing the same, they both start murdering homeless men. The boy leaves their bodies in ditches or alleys while the old man buries them in his dirt-floor basement. This comes to an end when the old man has a heart attack while burying a body and has to call the boy to come finish the job for him. While in the hospital, the man ends up sharing a room with an old man who recognizes him. This is where the story requires an awfully big suspension of disbelief. The man in the other bed is a Holocaust survivor and realizes that his new roommate is the man who sent his wife and daughter to the gas chambers. While it’s a great twist in literature, it’s pretty hard to believe this big of a coincidence would ever happen in real life. A Nazi hunter shows up at the hospital to inform the old man that he’s been found out, but the man swallows enough pills to commit suicide before he can be taken away. The boy claims he had no idea about the man’s past, but the police don’t believe him. Eventually, the boy kind of loses his mind from trying to keep straight all of his lies and is killed by the police after going on a shooting spree along the highway. While I liked this story, I wasn’t a big fan of the ending. As weird as it might sound, I kind of wanted both characters to live and go on torturing each other for years to come. Because, really, wouldn’t that be a fate worse than death? Living the rest of your life always checking over your shoulder because someone knows something horrible about you would be absolutely terrible. So really, these guys got off pretty easy by dying. I also really like reading about psychopaths and sociopaths, so I found these characters fascinating. Again, I’m not sure what that says about me, and I’ve decided to not put too much thought into it. Anyway, this one is a pretty quick read (it only took me so long because I was trying to grade final papers at the same time). And the characters are well-written and incredibly realistic, other than that one huge coincidence that made me roll my eyes a little.
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Jacinta M. CarterProfessional Book Nerd Archives
July 2019
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