In Awe Book

The poetic language of In Awe places images like mutilated mannequins and a defunct miniature golf course in a weird, dark Kansas setting. Scott Heim's lyrical tale of three outcasts (a 17-year-old boy, a 32-year-old woman, and an old woman) works its eerie magic on two levels. On one level, it's about people so vilified by society that their ambitions come from horror stories: Boris is writing a story in which the three friends will rise from the grave "with worms on [their] wrists like gray bracelets" and wreak zombie vengeance, and Sarah wants to "star in movies where everyone will suffer sobbing and she alone will survive for top billing in the sequels." On another level, it's about an obsessive desire for a love object (Boris's for another boy he sees as "half-hyena, half-swan") that is so fierce, it can only be consummated in death.Read More