![]() ![]() I know the length and style is a conscious decision on Hassan’s part - Crash getting a book deal to sell his story’s used as a framing device to explore not only his character but also the character of his - close acquaintance? not quite friend? frenemy? something? - Burn (yeah, it’s a complicated relationship. So my status after reading this? It's complicated. Don’t get me wrong, I for one totally appreciate how Hassan’s written an incisive contemporary that really speaks to me as a twentysomething guy and needless to say totally loved the concept behind and writing of the book, but Crash’s narration also struck me as excessively long, convoluted, and just dragged on and on and on. Crash and Burn is definitely something that I wouldn’t hesitate to call indisputably well conceived and written, yet at the same time, I’d be lying if I said there weren’t aspects to Michael Hassan’s debut novel that didn’t bother me. I haven't been this conflicted over a book since Libba Bray's The Diviners - and for pretty much the same reasons. And it's a powerful meditation on how normal it is to be screwed up, and how screwed up it is to be normal. It's a portrait of the modern American teenage male, in all his brash, disillusioned, oversexed, schizophrenic, drunk, nihilistic, hopeful, ADHD-diagnosed glory. Michael Hassan's shattering novel is a tale of first love and first hate, the story of two high school seniors and the morning that changed their lives forever. ![]() And what you definitely don't know are the words that Burn whispered to Crash right as the siege was ending, a secret that Crash has never revealed. What you might not know is what came before: a story of two teens whose lives have been inextricably linked since grade school, who were destined, some say, to meet that day in the teachers' lounge of Meadows High. You likely already know what came after for Crash: the nationwide notoriety, the college recruitment, and, of course, the book deal. On April 21, 2008, Steven "Crash" Crashinsky saved more than a thousand people when he stopped his classmate David Burnett from taking their high school hostage armed with assault weapons and high-powered explosives. ![]()
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