The Outsiders

(I started The Outsiders in print, but I couldn't get into it, so I ended up listening to it on audio. I settled in pretty fast, once I heard how the characters speak.)

Somehow I have missed The Outsiders, even after all the recommendations for it, even after seeing it on lots of people's favorite book lists, even after owning a copy of it for a good while. My feelings about it, after finally getting to it, are mixed. I'm sure things were very different fifty years ago, when the book was written, but lots of things about it are jarring to me, in 2017. Rich kids in gangs? Poor boys who fight at night but go to high school the next day and make good grades? Gangs who fight with fists? A boy mixed up with a kid who knifes another boy to death yet goes home to his brothers rather than jail? The author is female? And young? Most jarring of all, honestly, was finding out that these gangs live in Oklahoma.

There were so many things I liked about the book that I can't list them all. Most importantly, the story has a deep honesty in the depiction of the relationships between the boys that I rarely see. The empathy that Ponyboy develops toward his rival gang members was also interesting.

I'm going to watch the movie this weekend.