Gone

Michael Grant’s Gone is a riveting story of under-15s left alone in a 20-mile-diameter area of coastal California the kids call the FAYZ when everyone over 15 disappears. (Spoiler alert: this review discusses the end of the novel.) Thanks to Shannon for turning me on to this series!

The story is told through the perspectives of a number of different characters including the protagonist Sam Temple, a surfer who once saved a bus-load of kids and has “four bar” psychic powers; Lana Arwen Lazar, who heals herself after her grandpa’s truck runs off the road when he disappears; Albert Hillsborough, who takes over the local McDonald’s and recognizes the coming food scarcity before other kids do; Mary Terrafino, who runs the local daycare; Computer Jack, technology expert; Dahra Baidoo, who tends the hospital; and Caine Soren, who discovers he’s Sam’s twin brother given up for adoption in infancy.

The depiction of the children’s plight is convincing and gripping. Each character has backstory based on which they make decisions in their current situation, and each character has strengths that are tested in the course of the action. I find the depiction of the less savory characters somewhat one-dimensional, although the guilt Captain Orc experiences after his actions lead to a friend’s death is moving. The single-mindedly mean characters--Howard, Drake, and Caine--seem a little less complex, and the “bad girl” Diana, who makes choices based on her own vision of herself as such, also seems a little stilted.

Although I noticed the Christian imagery in the characters’ names--Temple for the hero, Mary for the mother figure who takes care of children, Lazar for the girl brought back from death, and Caine for the antagonist--most of the book seems to treat the religious views of the few religious characters as individual to them. Only in the last few pages does the religious angle become heavy-handed.

The show-down takes place in the church where Caine and his cronies attempt to kill off the kids with psychic powers. As the love-interest Catholic Astrid is hoping to save her brother Little Pete, she launches into a prayer calling upon “St. Michael the Archangel [to] defend us in battle,” and Dekka, who can lift things with her mind, says, “Amen,” and pulls the wreckage off Little Pete (538). The juxtaposition of the prayer at this climactic moment with Dekka’s saving Little Pete seems like an answered prayer, as if the events of the story all build up to confirm God’s presence in the FAYZ.

This sequence is followed by a Thanksgiving sequence where Astrid invokes God again in modeling a speech for Sam, and Sam does the same thing in his actual speech. Although in his speech Sam allows room for non-believers, the combination of these elements and the allegorical names makes the ending seem overly religious, like a Peanuts holiday special. I don’t think I would have minded if the religious aspects were consistent throughout, but because they were not, the emphasis in the end seems like a moral imposed from outside the story. 

Image Source: Gone Cover Image. amazon.com. Web. 26 May 2012. http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=Gone

Work Cited: Grant, Michael. Gone. New York: HarperCollins, 2008. Print.