The Grounding of Group Six and other strange YA novels

[rachelmanija]

iknowcommawrite has a great review of The Grounding of Group Six, a deeply peculiar YA novel which I bet at least some of you read and were boggled by, and which I loaned her if she'd post on it. Go forth and discuss! (The Grounding of Group 6 on Kindle.)

coffeeandink solves a decades-old mystery for me by naming the book whose name I could never remember, The War Between the Pitiful Teachers and The Splendid Kids, and asks about subversive children's literature.

What books have you read where you thought, for reasons other than that it sucked, "How in the world did this get published?"

Comments

[rachelmanija]

I still don't understand I Am the Cheese. Like I literally have no idea what's happening in it.

[naomikritzer]

Good to know! I remember the tag line on the cover was "a bike ride through the Twilight Zone" and since I liked the Twilight Zone, I checked it out and NOTHING MADE ANY SORT OF SENSE.

[kore]

Yeah, he thinks he's on a bike ride, but in reality he's just circling around the grounds of a mental hospital and he's acting out a literal circle where the government is trying to see what he remembers and he just retreats into this fugue state instead. Sort of like Tiptree's "O My Sisters," but that was compact and amazing whereas Cormier's book is full of filler and weird twists that don't go anywhere.

[kore]

I believe what's happening is: the narrator was the son of someone in the mob or who turned on the mob, and his family was in witness protection. He doesn't remember his early years, and thinks he's just been the protected identity all his life. He thinks he's on a long bike trip but in reality he's bouncing around on the grounds of a mental hospital projecting his psychosis onto the other people who live and work there. His parents died in a car crash, which he finally remembers, but the sinister guy who visits and interrogates him is, surprise, a sinister government agent who IIRC helped kill his parents either because (I forget) he has Mob ties or thought the parents would blab. The kid has been at the hospital for years and years and they've been trying to get him to remember who killed his family (and maybe if he remembers what his father knew, and/or that the agent was there) but he just goes off into the fugue state on his bike. When he unwraps the teddy bear he's been carting all over at the end, which is the one remnant of his former life and survived the car wreck with him, the agent tells him his real name and he remembers the song his mother used to sing, but not much else. And the end of the book is the report from the government agent saying they should just keep on trying to extract the memories from this kid until he's killed or dies ("obliterates").

I remember all this because I read it in The Time Before Spoilers and I seriously thought he was on a trip and escaping, and it turns out, but no! He has been there the entire time! And has amnesia and the adults are interrogating and gaslighting and drugging him! The big reveal is when he calls his sorta-girlfriend's number and not only is she not there, she hasn't lived there for years. I remember not liking Cormier a whole lot but I kept being drawn to his novels in the library and would read them and then feel pretty freaked (my parents wouldn't let me buy copies, LOL). It's kind of amazing how often adults are out to get teenagers in 1980s YA novels.

[rachelmanija]

Whoa, that's bleak.

[kore]

Robert Cormier, everyone! *jazz hands*

[cahn]

I used to reread it fairly frequently in the hopes that eventually, someday, I would figure out wtf was going on. I eventually decided (and this was a while ago, so I might not remember details correctly) that what's going on is that the main character's family is involved in some sort of espionage or ... something? ... and they are put in basically a Witness Protection Program, but the bad guys find them. Narrator is the only survivor and is taken by the... government? bad guys? I am not sure we actually know? and given lots and lots of drugs so that they can figure out whether he knows anything. (I can't remember whether he actually does know anything or not, or whether it's even possible to tell from the book.) The drugs totally screw up his brain so he goes insane and keeps thinking he is escaping (the "trip" he takes on his bicycle), but it's actually all just a big drug-induced hallucination (hence that last scene where all the people in the asylum actually look like the people he saw on his "trip"). I think there's some indication (there's a note most of the way through about how the recommendation is to keep the subject until he "obliterates") that the drugs are messing him up progressively worse and he'll probably eventually just, well, obliterate.

[rachelmanija]

YIKES.

[kore]

YUP

LOL I love how we both remembered "obliterates" (the last sentence is something like, "until subject A is terminated or subject A obliterates").