Sometimes I read a book so amazing that I alternate between thinking, I will never be able to write something like this, and, I have to keep working as hard as I can so I can be this good. It is a weird sensation for a writer to be so torn between hope and defeat.
I sat down a couple days ago to start reading this month’s YA Book Club book while dinner was cooking. The first chapter is only three pages long, but by the end of it I was already feeling like this. My words cannot describe how amazing The House of the Scorpion is. The wonderful prose and brilliant storytelling I got in those first few pages did not let up for the entirety of the book.
This book has given me new heights to aspire to as I keep working on my own writing. Sure, it also pressures me with the I can’t do it sometimes, but I can always push that away and keep working. I don’t ever want my books to be the same as this one, but you better believe I will be working as hard as I can to make them as good as this one.
About The House of the Scorpion:
Matteo Alacran was not born; he was harvested. His DNA came from El Patron, lord of a country called Opium – a strip of poppy fields lying between the United States and what was once called Mexico. Matt’s first cell split and divided inside a petri dish. Then he was placed in the womb of a cow, where he continued the miraculous journey from embryo to fetus to baby. He is a boy now, but most consider him a monster – except for El Patron. El Patron loves Matt as he loves himself, because Matt is himself.
As Matt Struggles to understand his existence, he is threatened by a sinister cast of characters, including El Patron’s power-hungry family, and he is surrounded by a dangerous army of bodyguards. Escape is the only chance Matt has to survive. But escape from the Alacran Estate is no guarantee to freedom, because Matt is marked by his difference in ways he doesn’t even suspect.
