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Have You Seen Me

by Katherine Scott Nelson (Goodreads Author)

4.25 of 5 stars 4.25 · rating details · 20 ratings · 12 reviews

Chris and Vyv have always been close -- as the only two 'weird' kids in their small Midwestern town, they've often depended on each other to survive. But their friendship will be put to the test when Vyv runs away and continues to communicate with Chris in secret. All summer, as the search for Vyv mounts, Chris tries to avoid the pressure by working for Albert, an off-the-...more

ebook, 128 pages

Published October 17th 2011 by CCLaP Publishing

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Mar 19, 2013 Julio-Alexi Genao rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: pay-for-later, none-better

Stupendous. Rich with hilarity as well as the kind of creeping horror some writers would kill to be able to reproduce reliably. A moving, atmospheric tapestry of storytelling magic, with the odd paragraph or two so glitteringly beautiful and intense I simply forgot to keep breathing for a bit.

Joy. And fear. And love. All mixed-up together in a glorious stew of feelz.

Absurdly good.

They should have sent a poet.

19 likes · like · see review

Mar 26, 2013 Anna (Bananas!) rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: lgbtq, young-adult-coming-of-age, shortstack

Perfection. This blew me away. I'm in awe of the writing and I'm dumbstruck with feelz. Very highly recommended.
Despite being a novella, this reads like a full-length book. It's substantial and complete and lacks nothing imo. <3

8 likes · like · see review

Mar 24, 2013 SilkeeeeeeReads rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: made-absolutely-no-sense-to-me, don-t-bother

You know, maybe I'm really dense but this felt like a bad drug trip. It made no sense to me and I don't even know what bookshelf to put it on besides, "Don't Bother. "

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 09, 2013 Leanne rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: favorites, keeper-shelf, made-me-cry, free-to-donate, coming-of-age

Hauntingly beautiful writing. Funny as hell at times, but bone crushingly sad too... with this constantly growing sense of menace that left me wondering when things were going to go terribly, horribly wrong.
This is not your average coming of age teen drama. It is a harsh, realistic story of two amazingly brave and resilient young people who, in spite of a spectacularly shitty start, might just turn out ok.

Oh. And the writing? Just beautiful.

Granddad was my hero, once. When I was a kid, sometime...more

3 likes · like · see review

Oct 18, 2011 Jason Pettus rated it 5 of 5 stars

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Apologia: A deliberately all-positive critical essay, done specifically as a persuasive argument for other people

Why I Signed 'Have You Seen Me' -- An Apologia

It's no secret that I can sometimes be awfully critical of coming-of-age tales here, mostly because so many of them seem content to simply wallow in...more (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)

Apologia: A deliberately all-positive critical essay, done specifically as a persuasive argument for other people

Why I Signed 'Have You Seen Me' -- An Apologia

It's no secret that I can sometimes be awfully critical of coming-of-age tales here, mostly because so many of them seem content to simply wallow in a series of lazy tropes that have now been used seemingly hundreds of times (for example, all you Nick Hornby fans, the literary world no longer needs even a single further indie-based top-ten list ever again in human frakking history); but when a coming-of-age tale is done well, like it is in CCLaP's newest original book, Katherine Scott Nelson's Have You Seen Me, it has the ability to tap directly into a deep, hidden part of our inner brain that we often forget as adults is even still there, from a time when emotions ran deeper in our lives and every lesson learned seemed more important, precisely because we were learning them for the first time. Even as we get older, we still find it important to tap into this youthful passion on a regular basis, to remind us of why we feel certain ways about certain topics in the first place, to remind us of the often painful steps that led to us coming to those conclusions the hard way; and that's why coming-of-age tales continue to be perpetually popular among adults, apart from and for different reasons than why these themes now seem to be popping up more and more in Young Adult titles as well, designed in those cases for actual teens actually going through the experiences for the first time.

The story is set in a place and circumstance that so many of us Midwestern artists can relate to -- a small and generally backwards town in rural mid-1990s Nebraska, among two bohemian high-school juniors who are both gay (one girl, one boy), impatiently counting the days until they can leave their backwater burg and lead their atypical lives worry-free in public. When Vyv, then, the one with the hair dyed "Girl With Problems Red," decides rashly one day that she simply can't take any more, and that she's going to run away to eventually end up in New York City, it's up to her best friend Chris, a poetically stoic teenage boy with a surprisingly conservative attitude about life, to both keep her secret and throw the locals off the scent, the nervous populace quickly whipped up into a Clinton-Era panic attack about child abductions and small-town safety, the guilt eating away more and more at Chris as he's forced to watch Vyv's parents become more and more worried, confused in his head over where the line lays between being loyal to his friend and relieving at least some of the pain of those who are concerned about her.

And that leads us to the main reason I signed this book, also I think the main reason that its fans are going to love it so much: that despite the specifics of its artsy cast of characters, Have You Seen Me is a surprisingly traditional story, best described as taking an incredibly engaging narrator and then putting him through a series of basic but important moral tests for the first time in his life, questions that get both more subtle and more complicated as we get older and older, but that so many of us seemingly grapple with for the the first time right in these late-teen years. (What is 'right?' What is 'wrong?' Is it acceptable for this answer to change depending on the situation? To change from one person to the next?) Because it's not just the central question of whether or not to keep Vyv's secret that Chris is grappling with, but a whole plethora of ethical issues all occurring during one event-filled summer: if there's a way to help his permanently unemployed dad get out of his worsening depression; how to best help his proud but rapidly declining tough-guy grandfather, and how to best deal with his systemic homophobia; whether it's acceptable to keep working for a radical-left Unabomber-type loner named Albert (in my opinion, one of the most memorable characters in the entirety of CCLaP's publishing program), as he conducts a "rewilding" experiment in the woods on the edge of town, even as Chris slowly discovers more and more disturbing and violent details about Albert's attitudes and aims; even whether it's proper for him to seek medication for a feral, sick housecat who has become the pair's unofficial mascot during their construction work that summer, or whether he should heed Albert's command to "let nature take its course," to truly never be the master over another living creature, even if it means letting it die a preventable death.

Using a gentle wit and a sculptured style, Katherine brings those issues more and more to a head as this funny yet dark book continues, with a climax that I'll let remain a surprise, but let's just say has made me cry almost every time I've now read it, of the ten or fifteen read-throughs we did of this during its editing; and then if this isn't enough, she adds a double-whammy surprise-surprise at the very end, something not necessary for the plot but that suddenly gives us a much deeper and better understanding of the two main characters in question, a twist both ingenious and that makes us smack our foreheads and utter, "Duh, of course!" And so when all is said and done, this is no mere exercise in nostalgia and pop-culture name-dropping that so many coming-of-age tales seem to be, but a practical examination of issues important to all our lives, a look at the struggle to "do the right thing" and how exactly is the best way to determine that in the first place.

For the extremely random way that this manuscript came to the center's attention (Katherine was simply a member of the CCLaP Facebook group, and one day I sent a note to all the people in that group who listed themselves as writers in their profiles, asking if they happened to be working on something right that moment), I think that Have You Seen Me is one of the most purely entertaining titles that CCLaP has now put out in the four years of its publishing program, a title that I think holds a wide appeal and that will be attractive to readers across a wide range of boundaries. If you still haven't done so, I encourage you to download a copy for yourself as soon as possible. (less)

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Jun 23, 2012 David Katzman rated it 5 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Everyone

I loved Have You Seen Me. Have you ever found yourself reading a book, and you think … it’s so beautifully written, there’s going to be a misstep. There’s got to be because nothing could ring so true. That thought kept popping into my head for some odd reason as I read this, but every page I turned rewarded me with more honesty, effortless storytelling, and masterful writing.

The writing in Have You Seen Me had a certain quality that was remarkable. The sentence structures and the words selected...more
I loved Have You Seen Me. Have you ever found yourself reading a book, and you think … it’s so beautifully written, there’s going to be a misstep. There’s got to be because nothing could ring so true. That thought kept popping into my head for some odd reason as I read this, but every page I turned rewarded me with more honesty, effortless storytelling, and masterful writing.

The writing in Have You Seen Me had a certain quality that was remarkable. The sentence structures and the words selected aren’t showy. They’re not elaborate and extravagant. Yet they present a poetic rhythm contained within a realistic sensibility. Most of all what struck me was how powerful the story was at a sentence level and for a while, I was baffled how Nelson did it. Eventually, I came to the realization that what brought the seemingly effortless, excellent grammar* to such a high plane was the intensity of emotion that flowed through the entire work. This intensity embodied both the unconscious needs and conscious actions of the characters, and it gave a sense of absolute necessity to everything that is said, thought, or that occurred. Nothing is superfluous. Nothing is arbitrary or gratuitous. There is no room for that when you live on the knife-edge of passion and risk—of self and life.

The story centers on a deep and tortured friendship between two queer kids (high school age) in a small town in the Midwest. Vyv and Chris are both (mostly) in the closet, Chris more so than Vyv because he would not be accepted as gay in this small town and risked severe beatings or worse. At least Vyv tends to express her difference through a punk/goth style while Chris is trying hard to fit in until he can get away to college. He’s worried if he were outed, he might even end up thrown out by his own family. Vyv experiences severe anxiety/ depression/self-hatred, unable to express her true inner self in this backwater town (as she calls it). Vyv runs away from home while Chris does not, and this story follows what happens next.

I can’t highly recommend this enough. Have You Seen Me was a double nominee in the 2012 LAMBDA AWARDS for Best Gay Fiction by a Debut Writer and Best Bisexual Fiction of the Year. So I’m not the only one who loved it. Order the ebook or the high-quality handmade print book direct from the publisher here: http://www.cclapcenter.com/haveyousee...

*I use the word grammar to signify not just the sentence level grammar, but also the linguistic choices from word to sentence to paragraph to metaphor to symbolism, and so on.(less)

10 likes · like · see review

Apr 15, 2012 Ben rated it 5 of 5 stars

Urgent, desperate, and ultimately a literary experience that leaves the reader hopeful for where literature may yet go.

More - http://bentanzer.blogspot.com/2012/04...

3 likes · like · see review

Apr 08, 2013 Ray Charbonneau rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: general-fiction

I enjoyed reading this, but it did leave me wondering what the point was.

like · see review

Apr 02, 2013 Natalie rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: coming-of-age, dark, free

Incredibly good writing and atmosphere you could cut with a knife.

4 likes · like · see review

Mar 06, 2013 Elizabetta rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: ya, coa-coming-of-age, abuse-torture, grat-h

Wow, so powerful and such a gift of writing in and between the lines.

4 likes · like · see review

Jun 01, 2013 Peter rated it 5 of 5 stars

Short and to the fucking point.

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Apr 20, 2013 Michael rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 24th-annual-lambda-lit-awards

I really liked this book, plain and simple. The story was engaging and really kept you thinking until the end. I didn't know what to expect but paid to download it and was not disappointed. I probably identified with it being set in a fictional small town in Nebraska, having grown up in small town Nebraska myself. I could see another book coming from this as everything wasn't completely resolved. I highly recommend it.

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Jun 17, 2013 Christina Marie marked it as to-read

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Jun 17, 2013 Nandi Thaib rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: young-adult, m-m

Jun 06, 2013 Carnell marked it as to-read

Jun 06, 2013 Alice marked it as mm-to-read

Shelves: ya, ya-r, want-list, m-m

Jun 01, 2013 Jacki Myers marked it as to-read

May 16, 2013 Stefani - SpelingExpirt marked it as to-read

Apr 27, 2013 Beth marked it as to-read

Apr 23, 2013 Owen marked it as to-read

Shelves: lgbtq-fiction

Apr 09, 2013 Heather K (dentist in my spare time) marked it as to-read

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Shelves: contemporary, cool-pretty-or-hot-cover, male-male, young-adult-or-new-adult, free-gift-prize-or-online

Apr 03, 2013 vcious marked it as to-read-fiction

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12906661-have-you-seen-me?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1318949961l/12906661.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12906661-have-you-seen-me?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]Have You Seen Me by Katherine Scott Nelson[/url]

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