'Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn Essay\r'

'Review: Breathing Underwater by Alex Flinn\r\nBreathing UnderwaterBreathing Underwater by Alex Flinn is compose as a series of diary entries. The journal is written by chip as an assignment from the sound out who also sends him to anger management after the exact girl he beat up finally presses charges. The intensity was published in 2001, before the recent ontogenesis in dating violence novels, and it tells a report often overlooked, that of the abuser instead of the abused.\r\nIt’s a delicate subject. And it tells a hard story. Because while prick is (obviously) not without his faults, he most certainly has his size equal slurs as well. And as I read I found myself feeling… not benignant, exactly, but unquestionably feeling something, more(prenominal)(prenominal) than I thought I would.\r\nInitially, nick is angry at world strained into these assemblage anger management classes and he hates the brain of having to keep a journal. He doesn’t intend he has a problem, phones he just inescapably to pretend to clean up a little so he can reap Caitlin back, get the courts out of his face and everything can be perfect again. Because we be reading Nick’s journal, we are privy to his thoughts, his perceptions and misconceptions. scarcely we are also able to read between the lines and recognize that we are scatty things, both because Nick is leaving them out and because Nick simply doesn’t see them.\r\nThe initial entries into the journal are very sarcastic and emotionless. It’s reform that Nick doesn’t want to be bothered with a journal and that he thinks it’s stupid. But as Nick’s story progresses, more and more emotions leak onto the pages until Nick is very belongings a journal and using it as a way to organize his thoughts and face up to achy memories and truths.\r\nThis is a book with astounding character growth. We determine enough about Nick throughout the manikin of the story to sack out that his life is not as easy or golden as his prepare friends always believed it to be. And Caitlin knew this, which is perhaps the reason that she stayed with him for so long, forgave him so many times. But, even though Flinn offers up Nick’s back story, fall by the waysideing us to get to know who he is and what life experiences have shaped him, she never excuses or justifies his behavior, and ultimately Nick is not allowed that each.\r\nThe group anger management class ends up being the best thing that ever happened to Nick, both because of the sympathetic and understanding instructor, and because Nick can see himself in the actions of some of the other members of the class and he doesn’t like what he sees. For such self-assessment to come from a 16 year old who then takes it and applies it to fashioning himself better is amazing. Nick really grows as a person and while I usurp’t think Caitlin should ever take him back, I also think that he would not easily allow himself to fall back into the patterns of an abusive relationship. He really gets it.\r\nThis is a story that needed to be told and needfully to be read by more throng. I don’t think enough people know about this book and I don’t think it’s one that should be missed. It’s painfully hard to read at times. Nick doesn’t hide the nasty things he said to Caitlin, because in the beginning, he doesn’t think there is anything wrong with what he’s done. And then, as he begins to recognize what was wrong with his actions, he starts to crack more of his internal motivations for being so ferocious and the thought to action correlation begins to make more sense.\r\nFlinn is brave for taking an oft told story and tattle the unspoken side of things. It would be easy, in a novel about an abuser to make him either evil and terrible or to justify his behaviors to the point of absolution. But abuse is not a con strue and it’s rarely so simple as to be the actions of the truly evil. And Flinn has captured that beautifully. Nick is human. He is blemished and over time, he begins to accept that and work toward a change.\r\nTHIS is what Contemporary is all about. Finding these novels that capture a moment in the human experience and open your eyes to it, make you recognize it for what it is, make you interpret and grow as a person and economic aid to open windows of understanding into subjects otherwise closed to us. every(prenominal) side has two stories and it is a brave generator who can so masterfully tell the unpopular one.\r\n'