F.+Midterm+Essay

The novel I read, “That Was then, This is Now”, is a book written by S.E Hinton. Hinton is known for making books about for the younger generations. This book is a sequel to “The Outsiders”, which I enjoyed reading, so this book was an easy to read which made it fun and exciting. I think you should read the this book because it is about the youth hard ships, takes place where kids hang out at, and the book has good viewpoints on some kids’ lives in our society today.

In this book the kids go through about as much as one person could think. Bryan, one of the main characters, has a younger brother, named Mark, who came from a foster home and is trying to keep him out of the trouble. Bryan also tries to have a girlfriend but just cannot seem to connect with her as he wants too. Mark and Bryan’s mother is in the hospital and they check on her everyday while she recovers from her surgery. They both try to find jobs but since they cannot find one they go to a pool hall and hustle people out of money. They both also go through the death of their best friend which is mostly their fault. Also one of their other friends runs away and they cannot find him until two weeks later.

This book mostly takes place where you would find 17 and 18 year olds growing up around their time. In the beginning, they were mostly around older people in bars and such. Other times they were in cars driving through rough parts of town that most people would not even go. They also went to school dances and house parties. The thing that I started to realize is that as the book progressed on, they started to go to more family sanctioned places. They stayed at home a lot more when they noticed that life was not just a big game. After their friend died they started to visit their mother in the hospital a lot more than just once a day and stayed for long periods of time. The author used the settings of the book to show how they were feeling at the time.

I also like how the author made it to so that they always confronted their problems head on in the book. For Example, when Bryan stopped liking the girl he was with, he told her that he wanted them to be friends and most of the time when he confronted problems head on they worked alright. Other times it did not, like when Mark’s ex-girlfriend came to him trying to ruin his dance when he was at the school dance, he got her drunk and cut all her hair off. Then a few days later he got jumped by her brother’s friends for doing it. And other times they make decisions not knowing what the consequences are, like when Bryan found out that Mark was selling drugs he called the police on him and they connected him to someone being mentally ill for life and Mark got 20 years in jail. The way they handled the problems in their life made it a good book because they made decisions not looking back but looking forward.

This book is the best book I have ever read. This book contains a lot of genres to it from, drama to being funny and then being surprised. This book would be good for younger people because it appeals to them more just like “The Outsiders.” This could also help kids going through problems in tough neighborhoods and even in rich ones. In general, this book is amazing.