Holes - Louis Sachar

Louis Sachar's Holes isn't a fantasy novel, it's partly a detective novel and partly a historical novel, and wholly gripping. I've read a lot about it on the Child_Lit discussion list so when I saw it in the library on Saturday I didn't hesitate to borrow it. When Stanley Yelnats, is accused and found guilty of a crime he did not commit, he's sent to Camp Green Lake; he really doesn't think it can be too bad, certainly better than prison. Stanley and his family try to pretend that he is just going away to camp like the rich kids do, and he promises to write to them every day. But the camp is nothing like the summer camps that rich kids visit. Camp Green Lake is a juvenile detention centre where the belief is that "If you take a bad boy and make him dig a hole every day in the hot sun, it will turn him into a good boy." There's no Lake and it's not Green either. The harsh realities of the camp, and the evil Warden who wears rattlesnake-venom impregnated nail polish and has her own reasons for making the boys dig so many holes, sometimes make prison seem like a great idea. Stanley Yelnats has always had bad luck and few friends, but Zero, one of the other boys at the camp, asks Stanley to teach him to read, and suddenly Stanley discovers that he is important to someone other than his parents. One day he leaves the camp to go in search of his friend Zero, who had run away a few days earlier after being mistreated. The journey of the two boys towards freedom becomes a battle with thirst, the heat and hunger in the shadow of Big Thumb - a mountain so entwined in Stanley's own family history that he knows if they can reach it they will somehow find salvation. This is a complex story which is riddled with harsh imagery and despair, yet it's also a perceptive and intricate look at family and friendship which never shies away from harsh realities, and it injects the story of a seemingly hopeless boy with a sideways sort of humour that somehow lightens the arid desert of Texas.

Sachar has recently published a follow-up to Holes, called Small Steps which follows up the stories of Armpit and Xray, two of the minor characters from Holes. There's also a Holes movie which I've not seen, and am uncertain about watching (I vaguely remember much discussion about it on Child_Lit, but as I'd not read the book, I didn't read the movie discussion !)