depressing conscience

Mercury Under My Tongue by Sylvain Trudel

Rating: 2 stars (out of 5)

Genre: fiction, YA

Review: When I was a teenager, I was very into depressing books about depressing things. And perhaps if I was still a teenager, I would have liked this book too. But I'm not, and I didn't. Not only is this book horribly depressing (it's about a 17-year old boy in the hospital dying from bone cancer), but it uses one of my least favorite literary techniques: stream of consciousness. He's already come to terms with his own death, so there's not a lot of existential wrangling going on, just imaginary conversations with his family and a few glimpses of life in the hospital. And teenage angsty poetry. If you're interesting in knowing what's going on in the head of this particular fictional dying teenager, this is the book for you. But if you're actually looking for a good book or compelling writing, skip it.