Summary:
A review of Louis Sachar's imaginative novel Holes, about a boy who is sent to a detention center, where the occupants spend each day digging holes.
From the title itself, this novel has definitely got a lot of holes readers should expect, the literal one and the figurative one. In this book, the excitement lies in the reader, because they have to fill those holes themselves.
Highly commented as a rugged, engrossing adventure novel, Holes is partly about a well filled-out boy named Stanley Yelnats. Believed to be under a curse because of his no-good-dirty-rotten-pig-stealing great-great-grandfather, he has been unjustly sent to a boys' detention center called Camp Green Lake. At Camp Green Lake, boys build character by spending all day for eighteen long months, digging holes.
Time in Camp Green Lake is far slower compared to cities. Apparently because there is nothing to do there but to dig holes. Having stayed there for a month and a half, to Stanley, seemed like a year. On the other side of his bad luck, he accomplished many things there. He built patience, self-control, made friends, enemies as well, pleased the warden (the 'big boss' at Camp Green Lake), irritated her as well, and most of all, taught someone to read. At the end all goes well as Stanley was proven innocent and unconsciously stopped their family curse.
Defined as smart jigsaw puzzle of a novel by the New York Times, the history of Camp Green Lake and some adventures of the early Yelnats' generation are being squeezed in part by part as the reader approaches the book's last page, to help the reader fill the holes in their minds.
Although the novel was unrealistic, because of the presence of a mountain having stream with water running uphill, Sachar made his novel imaginative, but not fairy-tale like. He also made sure that his novel will suit all ages, and he did a pretty good job concerning that. And lastly, one word that will really fit this novel, and which no one will object: Satisfying.
This is the complete article, containing 312 words
(approx. 1 page at 300 words per page).
