Rotters by Daniel Kraus; Deloacorte Press; 2011; 454 pgs; $16.99 US

Young Adult books have come a long way since I was a kid. J.K. Rowling started a YA renaissance with her Harry Potter books, and it seems like every publisher (And every movie studio….) has been looking for the next big thing now that Harry’s last adventures have been published. Putting aside the execrable Twilight series, that rush to publish YA books has yielded some remarkable stuff, such as the Hunger Games series, Rick Yancy’s extraordinary Monstrumologist novels, and now Daniel Kraus’ bizarrely unclassifiable Rotters.

Rotters takes every teen’s fear of being an outcast, and multiplies it to the Nth degree……Joey Crouch is an average, if slightly OCD, sixteen year-old living in Chicago with his Mother, when his life takes a horrible turn. His Mother dies after being run over by a bus, and Joey is, per his Mother’s Will, sent to live with the Father he never knew. Life with Ken Harnett is as far removed from his former existence  as possible…….Harnett live in a rundown shack on the outskirts of a small town, has no phone, cable, or internet, and makes his living, such as it is, as a “Garbageman” (Which is also the nickname the townspeople have given him….), picking up people’s junk and selling it. None of which makes the new kid very popular. Imagine how the kids at school would feel if the discovered Ken’s REAL secret……he robs graves for a living.

Ken is a grave-robber, or “Digger”, as they prefer to be called, and when Joey stows away on his Father’s truck one night he discovers the secret for himself,  and despite his horror at the thought of digging up corpses,  Joey is soon at Ken’s side, sharing in some truly twisted Father/Son bonding.

Kraus does a wonderful job of making the reader feel the horrific depths of Joey’s torment and isolation, and it’s easy to see how a life of digging up graves could be seen as preferable to the daily torment of High School. He also does some incredible world-building, introducing a supporting cast of other Diggers, and giving them a fully fleshed-out world to inhabit, as well as a riveting backstory. The villain of the piece is a marvelously complex creation, and every page he is on shines even brighter than the rest of the book. My only complaint is that the book goes on about 100 pages too long…..By the time Kraus gets to his (Admittedly spectacular) finale, I was past ready for the book to be over. There’s a little too much navel-gazing going on at times, and things could have used a tiny bit of tightening.

Rotters is a complex, challenging, gut-wrenching book. Don’t let the YA tag scare you away…..Kraus has crafted a novel that Horror fans of any age (Well, Teens and up…) will feel right at home with.

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Jun 1, 2011

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