Fum

by Adam Rapp

What is it like to be a giant? Meet Corinthia Bledsoe, a seven-foot tall high-school junior who can predict the future.

Over seven feet tall and with a newfound ability to sense future events, Corinthia Bledsoe is far more than just another Midwestern high-school junior; she’s a force of nature. When she predicts with terrifying accuracy the outcome of a tornado that will hit her high school, leaving a cow standing midcourt in the Lugo Memorial field house, Corinthia finds herself at the epicenter of another kind of storm entirely. And as things get stranger and stranger — both in her small town and her own home — lives start to intersect in ways even Corinthia can’t foresee.

Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Teen

416 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 2018

About the author

Adam Rapp says that when he was working on his chilling, compulsively readable young adult novel 33 SNOWFISH, he was haunted by several questions. Among them: "When we have nowhere to go, who do we turn to? Why are we sometimes drawn to those who are deeply troubled? How far do we have to run before we find new possibilities?"

At once harrowing and hypnotic, 33 SNOWFISH--which was nominated as a Best Book for Young Adults by the American Library Association--follows three troubled young people on the run in a stolen car with a kidnapped baby in tow. With the language of the street and lyrical prose, Adam Rapp hurtles the reader into the world of lost children, a world that is not for the faint of heart. His narration captures the voices of two damaged souls (a third speaks only through drawings) to tell a story of alienation, deprivation, and ultimately, the saving power of compassion. "For those readers who are ready to be challenged by a serious work of shockingly realistic fiction," notes SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL, "it invites both an emotional and intellectual response, and begs to be discussed."

Adam Rapp’s first novel, MISSING THE PIANO, was named a Best Book for Young Adults as well as a Best Book for Reluctant Readers by the American Library Association. His subsequent titles include THE BUFFALO TREE, THE COPPER ELEPHANT, and LITTLE CHICAGO, which was chosen as a New York Public Library Book for the Teen Age. The author’s raw, stream-of-consciousness writing style has earned him critical acclaim. "Rapp’s prose is powerful, graphic and haunting," says SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL. [He] writes in an earthy but adept language," says KIRKUS REVIEWS. "Takes a mesmerizing hold on the reader," adds HORN BOOK MAGAZINE.

In addition to being a novelist, Adam Rapp is also an accomplished and award-winning playwright. His plays--including NOCTURNE, ANIMALS AND PLANTS, BLACKBIRD, and STONE COLD DEAD SERIOUS--have been produced by the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the New York Theatre Workshop, and the Bush Theatre in London, among other venues.

Born and raised in Chicago, the novelist and playwright now lives in New York City.

Reviews

[melydia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Corinthia Bledsoe is a teenage giant who discovers she can predict certain events, such as tornadoes hitting the high school and geese destroying the football field. (Why either of these events might have happened is not addressed.) Billy Ball is an awkward freshman with flatulence problems and a fixation on Native American culture. Their paths cross exactly once, an event which seems to have almost no impact on either of them. Corinthia's brother Channing, star football player, goes missing for no reason. Corinthia's mother cannot handle having a giant for a daughter. Corinthia's father seems unsurprised to learn of his daughter's soothsaying abilities but this is not explored. There are wolves prowling the outskirts of town for some reason. The whole thing feels kind of slapped together. None of the major events seem to have any impact on any of the characters (except Channing's disappearance on his mother), and none of the characters change or grow in the slightest over the course of the book. Basically it's just a weird series of scenes that left me wondering why the author felt a need to share them. Not recommended.

Side note: Corinthia is described as being 7'4" and 287 pounds, yet much is made of her tendency to break toilets and the need to reinforce her chair legs with steel. Which makes me wonder what kind of toothpick chairs and teacup china toilets this town has to be crushed by someone under 300 pounds. I've known people in excess of 400 pounds use public toilets without incident. I know it's a minor detail, but it really jumped out at me.

[Dee · Rating 4 out of 5]

An enjoyable and thought-provoking book from the start, Rapp's style is both descriptive and droll, immersing the reader in a world that is real down to the colors and smells. It helps that I am from the Midwest, from Illinois, and even worked in a small town school, so it was very easy for me to envision the scenes and essence Rapp describes.

The characters are vivid and appear both real and unreal in our minds because their experiences mirror our own but their actions are often more edgy than most of ours will ever be. Some have powers we may only dream of.

The ending left me thoughtful I guess, with some unanswered questions, which felt suspiciously like real life, as much as the whole book often did.

I look forward to reading another of Rapp's stories and would love recommendations from anyone who has read from his collection.

[Dawn F · Rating 3 out of 5]

This felt like two stories mashed into one. The story of Corinthia who has gigantism and possessed foresight was one. I didn’t really know what to do with this story. I didn’t get her, nor her connection to her adult friend, which was supposed to be romantic but was overly sappy out of nowhere. Maybe it was supposed to represent something else but in that case it went over my head. Secondly we follow Billy who is bullied, has little of friends, and instead confess all his inner thoughts to a diary he names Dave. This is where Adam Rapp shows his strength, in his unfiltered stream-of-conscious way of kids talking and thinking. I loved those parts. They were equally sympathetic, shocking and disturbing, as they should be. So I am back to my mystery of what I was supposed to take from Corinthia’s story. Unless it was less about her and more about her parents, or the people around her, including Billy. I don’t think the narrator did much to help it along, she reads in a shrill, sharp voice that made me see silver blades in my mind. Not my favorite of his works, but luckily there’s a larger olympic swimming pool more to dive into, so ^_^

[bananabreadlover · Rating 3 out of 5]

I got this at the downtown Library book sale and picked it up based solely on the cover. The room the book sale was in was so incredibly overstimulating and hot and full of people that I consider it a win that I found anything at all.

A 7+ foot giant girl predicts future disasters in a small town where nothing is supposed to be happening? What a cool idea for a story. Though I do wonder if the actual specs for Corinthia, 7ft 2 and 280 lbs, are fitting enough for the way she is described - as this absolute towering monster of a girl. 7ft is tall, but under 300lbs? Meh, I just don't feel like she'd be breaking public toilets and classroom chairs at 280.

I don't think I felt ~much~ of anything while I was reading this. I liked Corinthia, I found Billy alarming and maybe even a bit terrifying at times, I felt reserved anguish for Lavert, Cloris felt genuine and I felt simmering low-level contempt for everyone else in the novel who just refused to actually see Corinthia - but I didn't feel any of those things deeply.

I feel like I was just reading and observing and now the story is done but I don't think I feel any sort of resolve and I don't know if I care that I don't. I think I am just feeling a bit overwhelmed lately and can't think about this enough for it to be impactful, but I still enjoyed reading it. There was a nothingness about it that I found comforting, but in an unusual way. HA at this point I'm babbling so I digress.

---

"...Not because Corinthia has grown more and more aware of the acute feeling of not caring. Ineffectual is the word she's heard before. Or the phrase lack of affect. Her schoolwork has been excellent. Based on her grade point average, she's currently ranked third in her class, and her attendance is impeccable. And yet this lingering blankness bas been metastasizing somewhere deep inside her, like a small, cold stone slowly gaining mass,..." (13)

"...he was a fascinating but somewhat inaccessible boy." (117)

"Corinthia doesn't respond. She simply sits there." (309)

[April · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fum
By Adam Rapp
2018

A LibraryThing Early Reviewer book.
Wow! Adam Rapp is an author I hadn't heard of before receiving this book, but he definitely is one I should have heard of. His writing is detailed and evocative and stirring and matter of fact, all at the same time. The characters are real and beautiful, while also outlandish and terrifying. Set in a realistic town of today, the characters and events seem even more frightening, then if they were in a fantasy setting. This is superb story telling. I don't know what else to say that wouldn't be a spoiler. Read this book, really. You'll be glad you did.

Spoiler












Even if the last section made me cry.

4 1/2 stars.

[Gil-or (readingbooksinisrael) · Rating 1 out of 5]

*This review is a review of an ARC-Advanced Reader's Copy-but all thoughts are my own*

DNF

But why did I DNF this?

1. A lot of words were stuck together: "lavender-andcottoncandycolored" etc. I know it hasn't finished being edited, but still.

2. There were a lot of really weird/disgusting/creepy in a bad way sentences:

Read the examples AT YOUR OWN RISK

...Corinthia wonder whether or not he possesses nipples, or, rather, if under his clothes he is some other kind of being: a fish person with gills. Instead of a penis, does he possess a little hidden ventral fin? A spout?

Corinthia notices a dull, chalky stripe down the center of his tongue and wonders if he sometimes keeps the clown fish in there as some perverse exercise in oral pleasure.

3. There was some racist stuff:

...hot-blooded ch*l* way.

4. And it was so, so ableist. There was just pages and pages of abelist writing:

I put it in spoilers because it is horrible. Be careful reading it if you've experienced abelism, especially from your own parents. Bolding is my own.

...when a mother is confronted with such a dramatic deformity of progeny
every day of her life, perhaps she must live in the hyper-present tense. It undoubtedly involves a certain amount of terror. Who knows how much larger her Corinthia's hands will grow?
Those fish-belly white slabs with the creepy funeral home director fingers and Alpine peaked knuckles.

[Corinthia's mother's] nightmares come.
Which include:
Corinthia eating the local Lugo children, feasting on their limbs like drumsticks, her mouth a horror movie rictus of saliva and innocent, half chewed flesh, her eyes pinned and cougar-like,
her nostrils flaring ludicrously.

[Corinthia's mother] has started to frequent a support group...gathers with a dozen or so other Parents of Grotesquely Disfigured Children, the PGDC.

And quotes like that just go on and on and on.

[Ryan Crampton · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as i love Rapp's previous works This ones an absolute mess. The plot never seems to go anywhere and feels more like a random series of events.

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 Stars! Amazing book with unforgettable characters and an ending you will not see coming. Full review will be posted shortly. This book is scheduled for a March 2018 release and it will quickly gain notoriety and should make every top bestsellers list in the country. In one word,.....Excellent.

[Michael Earp · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wonderfully verbose - joyful playing with language. Enjoyably surreal.

n.b. Occasionally felt uncomfortable with the way characters' physical differences were described, but this was usually from particular characters' perspectives, so I'm sure the effect was deliberate.

[Sherly Aguilar-Vega · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Fum" by Adam Rapp is a very unconventional, curious look into no regular girl, the 7 foot protagonist Corinthia Bledsoe. Corinthia discovers that she can fortell future events, like the tornando that wrecks her high school. She also meets adult Lavert Birdsong, who is dying from stage four pancreatic cancer, and we are also introduced to Billy Ball, a peculiar freshman struggling with school and the loss of his father. As the story goes along, Corinthia's brother goes missing and she learns that her mother struggles heavily with reconciling with the fact that her daughter is a giant, and Billy learns that his mother blames him and is resentful of him because of his father's death. All in all, this is a very hard review for me to write, particularly because Adam Rapp's writing style is so hard to follow no matter how many times I reread a chapter. I don't like this book very much; the plot was very choppy and felt slapped together -- there was no main storyline to follow, just jumbled pieces of short moments into chapters. The two main protagonists, Billy and Corinthia, also meet only once and it makes zero impact on their character development or on the overall plot. The consistency is stagnant, and the only reason I gave this book it's two stars is because I liked how Billy's chapters were written and I was able to sympathize with many of the characters in the book. Overall, the plots and scenes felt like they had no purpose and were in here for the sake of writing a book. 3/10, maybe you'll understand this book better than I did.

[John Clark · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I had to sum up this book in one word, it would be confounding. You start with Corinthia Bledsoe, a sixteen year old girl rendered a giantess by a pituitary tumor a few years earlier. At seven foot plus, she's had to adjust to a specially made seat, specially reinforced toilets at home and at school, as well as having limited friends and a mother who treats her like a freak. Add in an older brother whose football prowess has him headed for stardom in college and a dad who is the most laid back family member and you'd have a pretty odd start to a book. But wait, things get a lot stranger. First, Corinthia has a vision of three tornadoes hitting her small Illinois town, tearing the roof from the school auditorium and leaving an unscathed cow in the middle of the gym floor. Her panicked reaction while trying to warn the rest of the school, is seen as hysterical and vandalism, even after her premonition comes true. Add in a friendship with an older black man who's dying of cancer, more strange predictions that come true, her mom's extremely odd behavior, a vanishing family member and her ultimate choice to do what her mother has vaguely hinted at as a vocational option for a long time, and you have a story, that while intriguing and easy to read, is likely to leave many teen readers scratching their heads. There's an audience for this book, but it's certainly not for mainstream teens.

[Jackie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Corinthia Bledsoe is a giantess. At over 7 feet tall and just a junior in high school, you can imagine her life is filled with questions, odd-looks, and loneliness. But, it is also filled with bullies, a mother who is not only indifferent, but oddly distanced from her daughter, and visions. Yes, that’s right, visions. She see calamities that are about to happen and although she warns people, they don’t take her seriously at first.

Corinthia is highly intelligent, yet she doesn’t have a path in life. That is until some events in her life direct her on a path: she meets an ex-con who is struggling with pancreatic cancer, a beloved and adored brother who goes mysteriously missing, and a road trip to the northern reaches of Wisconsin that combine to turn her life towards her life’s mission.

Fum is filled with quirky, outlandish characters and almost inconceivable situations (which is what I normally love about Adam Rapp’s work), but so many questions are left unanswered that really don’t contribute to the overall story that I feel cheated. What purpose did Dave-the-journal serve? What really happened to Marlene? Where is Channing? And, what is up with the wolves? Too many storylines and not enough connections.

Thank you to LibraryThing Early Reviewers, Candlewick Press, and Adam Rapp for this ARC.

[Erin Cataldi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book went from crazy to bizarre in no time flat. It was well written but it seemed that it was written for adults instead of it's younger intended audience. A seven foot giantess is having a hard time fitting into her school. Literally and physically. They even had to have a second bathroom built for her after she broke two normal sized toilets. One day she starts to have visions of calamities that will befall her small town. One by one they start to come true but they come with a cost, she is suspended from school, feared by most, and disdained by her mother. There are a few side stories that don't mesh well with the plot or seemingly have anything to do with it. There is her favorite author, an older ex-convict she befriends, and the random disappearance of her brother. This story has charm but it's all over the map for me. The end was also a little startling.

[Kim McGee · Rating 3 out of 5]

Corinthia is just as her name suggests - a solid seven foot tall column. She has had to deal with breaking everything in sight and never fitting in - clothes, furniture or groups of kids at her high school. When she suddenly starts having fits and predicting strange events happening in the town she becomes even more of a freak show than before. Mom is a mess, her brother has gone missing and her poor dad is doing everything in his power to hold it together. Being a teenager is hard enough but being 7 foot tall almost 300 pound female teen is impossible. I loved her spirit but was saddened by the judgement she faced by everyone with the exception of her two friends. This book will resonate with teens but adults could learn a bit about acceptance too. Thanks to the publisher for the advance copy.

[Brad · Rating 3 out of 5]

I started this book with lots and lots of doubts. I chose this one because it’s a new audiobook release this month for one of my FAVORITE narrators (Lauren Ezzo) AND I was prepping for our interview with her as well.

FUM started out as a dreary, awkward, and darkly deep young adult that turned more into an adult sci-fi drama than I wanted it to.

The characters were richly fascinating, albeit creepy and disturbing.

I’ll be honest, a lot of the plot didn’t really make sense to me. It felt like a bunch of things were thrown into the mix without really flourishing the way I expected them to.

Overall, Lauren Ezzo’s narration was so great that it made me want to listen to this book til the end. I did lose interest as the book was nearing the end, but I got the gist of it and I found myself slightly disappointed in the end.

[Helena · Rating 1 out of 5]

It was overwritten in a way that didn't seem to connect totally to Corinthia's character, and the plot didn't really connect. But my main problem was how incredibly ableist it was. Like, how could an author write something this alienating to disabled kids with a good conscience? How could he turn a real medical condition into an unabashed sideshow attraction? How could he write a book with so many disabled and/or ill characters that is so insensitive to their actual experiences? Were there no sensitivity readers involved in this process?

[Kathy · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I was going to give it a 2, but the end of the book kind of tied everything together. What can I say? It's not a happy book. It's kind of a commentary on bullying. What happens between Lavert & Corinthia is not something that should happen with a 17 year old girl (or boy). And maybe that is why Corinthia ends up where she does, not just bullying.
I don't know if I'd recommend it to a teen. However, I think teens now are definitely not the same as teens when I grew up, even when my children grew up. Maybe it's something they should read.

[Ellen Zarate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fum is not for everyone. It is a heartbreaking, inspirational story about Corinthia Bledsoe, a giantess, whose prophesies include tornadoes, sky-blackening geese, and a suicide she's asked to assist. Adam Rapp's writing is a wonderful combination of whimsy and precision that perfectly exposes the pain that comes with being different and the resulting quest for comfort. This theme is balanced by the story of Billy Ball, whose pain and difference are internalized. If you're looking for a book that will leave you exhausted but better for having opened it, Fum should be your next read.

[Amber · Rating 5 out of 5]

When Corinthia Bledsoe predicts that three tornadoes are going to damage the school with a cow standing in the basketball court, no one seems to believe this larger than life young woman. It is only when it happens that her life and the world around her begins to get strange. Want to read more? Be sure to check this out at your local library and wherever books and ebooks are sold and find out for yourself.

I thought this was a pretty good but sad coming of age story set in high school. If you like these types of stories, then I recommend you check this book out.

[Kim B. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I got this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program. Thank you to Candlewick Press for the ARC.

I've liked all the other Adam Rapp books I've read (Punkzilla and The Children and the Wolves were both masterful at showing horrible events but still holding out some hope for the characters in them), but this was far below his usual skill level. Honestly, it just felt mean-spirited and depressing for the sake of being depressing. Corinthia herself is the only redeeming part of it.

[Joann M · Rating 1 out of 5]

Bizarre all around
What's it like to be a giant I have no clue..
This just was bizarre, weird from page 1 I felt by the middle of the book that I was reading multiple stories.
I just didn't care for it.

My thanks to NetGalley, the author and publisher for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Gabriel Dedeic · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found the book to be a page turner. The characters are big, bold and alive! I finished this book in only a few days. It was that good.

I fully recommend this book!

I recieved this book as a free giveaway from Goodreads.

[Shannon Levine · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wild. Ride.

[Jan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Adam Rapp is magic, as per usual.

[Tara · Rating 2 out of 5]

High vocabulary, realistic except for the "visions" Corinthia gets. Won't appeal to many.

[Elijah · Rating 1 out of 5]

This asshole is probably trying to be “edgy” by writing about disabled people the way an 18th century author would when making physical disability a mark of evil. It’s certainly not funny.

[Amy]

A giantess who predicts Tornadoes and whose mom goes to a support group for deformed children.

[Jenn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this story. The idea of it is amazing. Sadly, it's over written to the point of being almost incomprehensible. When you have to stop to diagram a sentence to make sure you're reading it properly, it's hard to enjoy the story.

It's a shame because like I say, the idea is amazing and there's the bones of a good story here. I just couldn't deal with the language. DNF at 10%. I'll be watching out for the author, though, I think there are good things ahead of him.

Receiving an ARC did not affect my review in any way.

[Alexandra]

A copy was sent to me by NetGalley and CandleWick Press and I am very grateful, but all opinions are my own. 

"Over seven feet tall and with a newfound ability to sense future events, Corinthia Bledsoe is far more than just another Midwestern high-school junior; she’s a force of nature. When she predicts with terrifying accuracy the outcome of a tornado that will hit her high school, leaving a cow standing midcourt in the Lugo Memorial field house, Corinthia finds herself at the epicenter of another kind of storm entirely. And as things get stranger and stranger — both in her small town and her own home — lives start to intersect in ways even Corinthia can’t foresee."

First of all... WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS??? When I first started reading, it was great although there's some sentences that irked me. Corinthia as a character is strange, I guess that's how the author wanted her to be, but she doesn't make sense. Her thinking is made up with some semi racist and semi ableist thoughts...like why though? She was supposed to be likeable and smart way beyond her age.  and that weird relationship with a dude who was like 30... whyyyyy whyyyyyy. She was 17, that was just out there.

One of the subplots that I like was Billy Ball, a bullied freshman with an obsession with Native American culture (especially their mythology about death) and he makes a list of people he hates in school. He was the only character in this book which made a little but of sense.

To be honest, I don't know where the author was going for, was he going for some open-ended novel? was he going for obscurity? I guess he made this novel to be like one those books with weird stuff that authors write in their YA novels. I don't know.

This might have been better as a screen play or a TV show like Lost and the Leftovers. 

2 out of 5 stars.

[American Mensa]

Fum is a very interesting book about a girl named Corinthia Bledsoe, who has a medical condition that has caused her to grow to over seven feet tall. At the beginning of the story Corinthia predicts the occurrence of a trio of tornadoes hitting her town. Many people question her and disbelieve her prediction. Then overnight her vision becomes true, the tornadoes hit and every detail that Corinthia had predicted came true. Suddenly at a school assembly the day after the tornadoes she has another vision. This time she sees that thousands of geese will arrive at the town and destroy the high school’s football field. While these visions are occurring Corinthia’s mother has begun going to a group for people whose children are severely deformed. This group, while it tries to help her, has the adverse effect, Mrs. Bledsoe begins to dislike her daughter and gains an attraction to a man from the group, causing issues for her marriage. I think that other readers would enjoy this book because it had a very mysterious aura. The book was very hard to put down and was incredibly interesting. The book was worth reading because it showed a glimpse into the life of a person that would have a very painful life situation. Overall this book was amazing and I am really glad that I read it.
Review by Bolden B, age 16, Central Pennsylvania Mensa