Chloris and the freaks: A novel

Chloris #2

by Kin Platt

Adjusting to her father's suicide and mother's remarriage leads a young girl to astrology which she uses to sort her family problems.

Genres: Young Adult

217 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Pseudonyms: Kirby Carr, Guy West, Alan West, Guy York & Wesley Simon York

Kin Platt (1911–2003) was the author of the perennially popular I Can Read Book Big Max, as well as several outstanding young-adult novels and the Max Roper mystery series for adults. Mr. Platt was also a noted cartoonist.

For more information, please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kin_Platt

Reviews

[Manybooks · Rating 1 out of 5]

While Kin Platt's Chloris and the Freaks was a rather mildly entertaining reading experience when I perused the novel as a teenager, even then, even at that time, I found especially the book title Chloris and the Freaks massively inappropriate and actually quite majorly loathsome (vindictively nasty), and many of the thematics and scenarios depicted more than a bit overly exaggerated (and actually, that is probably putting it mildly at best).

For frankly, my attitude even at the age of fourteen was that if the author, if Kin Platt had wanted to write a young adult novel that was in many ways supposed to be dealing with such serious (and yes even tragic, heartbreaking) topics like suicide, divorce, bullying and fitting in at school, why did he then make use of a book title that in and of itself actually seems to both promote and condone intimidation and an atmosphere of extreme nastiness? And while I in fact do not remember all that much about the story, the plotline itself (the specific details), I do well recall that I ended up only considering Chloris and the Freaks as at best barely adequate, and that it did leave me with a rather majorly nasty and uncomfortable taste in my mouth (especially the fact that Chloris actually talks to the spirit of her dead by suicide father, and that the spirit of her deceased father not only talks back to her but then actually helps Chloris break up her mother's marriage with her and yes in my opinion very sympathetically drawn and depicted new partner). And furthermore, that entire astrology angle, well I am sorry, but this has always felt totally superimposed and more than a bit artificial, although I do recollect that Kin Platt does at least and fortunately attempt to be somewhat critical of Chloris' younger sister Jenny's strange obsession with the former (and thus, while not a totally terrible or absolutely horrid novel by any stretch of the imagination, Chloris and the Freaks is also not a story that I would likely ever even remotely consider recommending to anyone, especially since the sequel has the even stranger, more problematic, and to me more personally offensive title of Chloris and the Weirdos, and I just remembered that the first book of the series has the oh so lovable and "supportive" title of Chloris and the Creeps, sigh).

[Laura · Rating 1 out of 5]

For some stupid reason, probably because it's a rainy Sunday and I'm feeling a bit out of sorts, I started thinking about this book, which was a sequel to the not-quite-as-vile Chloris and the Creeps (Kin Platt has such a knack for catchy titles, no?). I read this one a good 30-some years ago when I was perhaps 11 or thereabouts. Even at the time, I realized it was a piece of shit. My hand to god.

Here's what I remember: Jenny, the narrator, has an older sister, Chloris, who is, not to put too fine a point on it, a real bitch. At some point, I think during the first book, Jenny and Chloris's father takes his own life with a shotgun. By the second book, Jenny, who's around 11 or 12 at the time, has dealt with it, but Chloris, who was a daddy's girl, totally loses it and becomes sort of a Poison-Ivy-crossed-with-Regan-from-The-Exorcist psycho hose beast. Her head doesn't start turning 360 degrees around, but damn near. All that's really missing is Max von Sydow and Jason Miller throwing holy water and yelling, "The power of Christ compels you!"

So, by the second book, the mother has remarried a nice Mexican artist named Fidel Mancha (please don't ask me why the hell I remember that name), who's very sweet. Jenny loves him, Chloris hates him. Bet you couldn't see that one coming.

Meanwhile, Jenny, who heretofore has shown absolutely zero interest in astrology, has become sort of a junior Jeanne Dixon and is obsessed with it. (When I first read the book, I figured that either Kin Platt had just caught onto the astrology craze of the 70s and determined that it would help his sales figures if he worked it into the book come hell or high water, or that he had become an aficionado himself while trolling the singles bars after his divorce, probably the latter. It certainly was nice to see that he had his finger on the pulse of the decade, not that it made his work any better.) Therefore, about half this book is taken up with Jenny's telling us what was in her horoscope that morning, as well as that of her mother, her stepfather, and Chloris. As a result, the book is generally a strenuous bore.

ANYway, Chloris somehow purports to talk to the spirit of her dead father, who urges her to break up the marriage between her mother and Fidel. (I swear to Christ I am not making this up.) Now, you can see where this is going, right? Of course, it will transpire that Chloris is a very, very troubled girl who was deeply shaken by her father's death, as any teen would be, and is working out her sublimated issues by fantasizing that her dead father has come to fix her problems, right? And by the end, she gets some help, probably through therapy, right?

No, wrong. That would be the way an author without a thought disorder would deal with it. Here, because Kin Platt evidently did have a thought disorder, and was probably also just sort of a garden variety idiot, Chloris is really talking to the spirit of her dead father! That's right, folks: she's not a troubled teen who's so devastated by her father's death that she deals with it in the best way she knows how. No, she is actually communing with spirits. The only thing I can figure out is that Kin Platt took some adolescent psychology course at some point, read a case study where a girl fantasized about talking to the ghost of her dead father, and missed the class where the professor carefully explained that the fantasy wasn't actually real. (I guess we should thank god he never got around to reading Freud's case study of "The Wolf Man" -- I hate to think of the book the kids would have been subjected to if he had.) If I've ever seen a book with a less grasp of metaphor, I can't remember it.

So at the end, the father's ghost, or Chloris, who the fuck can even figure it out at this point, breaks up the mother and stepfather's marriage by making, I think, the mother have an affair. (Hey, you go try to figure it out if you're really interested.)

I suppose we should count ourselves lucky that this book appears to be out of print.

In all fairness to Kin Platt, he's not always this bad. Sometimes he's even worse, as he demonstrated when he wrote the execrable Hey, Dummy. I would say that Hey, Dummy was one of the worst YA books of the 70s, but that would be doing it a disservice, as surely it's one of the YA worst books ever written. (See also The Boy Who Could Make Himself Disappear).

[David Kiersh · Rating 4 out of 5]

In his previous book, Chloris and the Creeps, Platt delves into the lives of two kids dealing with a single mother and the suicide of their father.

Chloris and the Freaks starts out when Jenny's mother is finally happily marrie to Fidel Mancha. However, Jenny's older sister is up to her antics again and set out to destroy the marriage. Jenny has also become an astrology nut.

But it seems the real purpose of this book is that Platt is writing a book that honestly explains divorce to kids. While the ending is not a happy one, it does give some insight into how a marriage breaks up even when things appear fairly normal on the surface.

I think this is an important book.

Please disregard the harsh review on here by another reviewer. She is clearly unfamiliar with Platt's oeuvre and intentions.

[Dawn Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a book to make you really appreciate having parents who still love each other. It's a good book for young people, and a piece of nice, light reading for people who need a break from dry college texts.

[Michelle · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book a very long time ago, and the only thing I remember is that I really, really disliked it.

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started reading this book with my teenage campers this summer and we instantly knew we were in for a great book. After finishing it, I learned that we were right. The characters are a little bizarre, except Fidel, but it makes for an interesting story. Cute book.

[elissa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I can see from the back that this story has to do with astrology, but I don't remember a thing about it other than that I liked it and wanted to save it for my kids.