So Shelly by Ty Roth
pages: 304
released: February 2011
publisher: Delacorte Books
cover love: ♥♥♥♥
Until now, high school junior, John Keats, has only tiptoed near the edges of the vortex that is schoolmate and literary prodigy, Gordon Byron. That is, until their mutual friend, Shelly, drowns in a sailing accident. After stealing Shelly’s ashes from her wake at Trinity Catholic High School, the boys set a course for the small Lake Erie island where Shelly’s body had washed ashore and to where she wished to be returned. It would be one last “so Shelly” romantic quest. At least that’s what they think. As they navigate around the obstacles and resist temptations during their odyssey, Keats and Gordon glue together the shattered pieces of Shelly’s and their own pasts while attempting to make sense of her tragic and premature end. (from goodreads)
ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED ON 12/8/2011 ON BOOKSLIKESTARS.NET
Review:
This book had such a great concept. The three main characters, Gordon, Keats and Shelly are roughly based around the lives of famous poets of the same names: Lord Bryon, John Keats and Percy Shelley. There is an Author’s Note in the back which I would recommend reading first because it has a few facts about the poets, who were acquaintances in real life and helps piece together Ty Roth’s high school version of them. Keats (John) lives on the poor side of town and is obsessed with death. He knows he’s going to die young (his parents are both dead and his brother is headed in the same direction) and he wants to do something great before he dies. Shelly and Gordon come from wealthy families and are next-door neighbors who hang out with Keats while working on the school paper. Shelly is in love with Gordon but he never acknowledges her as anything but a friend. Gordon is a handsome, conceited jock whose carefree lifestyle tends to either outshine, annoy, or grab the admiration of others.
Shelly, herself, is already dead when you open this book. Keats and Gordon are at her funeral, plotting to steal her ashes from the high school and carry out Shelly’s final wishes: to scatter her ashes on an island near their town, exactly where she died and listen to a cryptic music mix she made for them. Narrated by Keats, the story takes place mostly in the past and consists of the choppy events that led up to Shelly’s unanticipated death.
Though it was all very interesting for me in the beginning, I couldn’t bring myself to stay that way for very long. Soon I was dragging myself through page after page of Keats’s intellectually witty narrative, which was overdone and made it hard to generate any emotion in me. The story, I felt, was mostly So Gordon. It was all about him. Even when it was about someone else. I grew tired of hearing about Gordon’s sexual romps and beautiful, hard-rock body. Yes, I know, who would tire of hearing such things. But it’s true. Throughout the whole story he’s egotistical, arrogant, selfish and disgustingly drunk on women. And the fact that Shelly lusted for this creature, knowing full well what type of person he was, was just unbelievable. From Keats’s descriptions of Gordon, I got the impression that he was in some way sexually attracted to him but it’s never confirmed in the story.
Overall, the concept was appealing and loaded with heavy themes: sex, incest, child abuse, abortion and rape but Gordon’s character soured the bunch and Keats’s depiction of the story was overripe and uninteresting. So Shelly was just okay and it could’ve been so much better.
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