Synopses & Reviews
Chris Lynch gave the following acceptance speech for "Freewill winning the Michael Printz Honor Award. Congratulations Chris!
Please forgive me if this speech doesn t make total sense. The words were written in April to be spoken in June, and I ve never believed anything I said for two whole months before.
When they told me one of the suggested topics for my brief talk was " the origin of the book", FREEWILL, it wasn t hard for me to get started.
Columbine. My story started, like millions and millions of other stories were born, with Columbine.
But if you ve read the book, you probably notice there really is very little connecting the actual events of the two. That s because, the story of the day itself, the tragedy itself, didn t exactly drive me to write about it.
Because I don t know, frankly, what can be said about random acts of violence. At least, I don t know if I would have insights into acts of bloodshed like that, that hadn t already been covered by many other people, and better than I could have done. I don t know that I would have ever gotten past the paragraph where I raved on, about our species century in, century out, mindboggling refusal to care very much, for fellow creatures who are not specifically, precisely, comfortably embraceably just like ourselves. And so we just push and push on each other until one or the other of us falls right over the edge.
That s what I would have said, I think, if I were writing about the event itself. But I wasn t. And it wouldn t have made much of a book at any rate. What struck me, as is usually what strikes me, is what isleft in the wake. What floats ashore two or three or three hundred days after something hugely awful or hugely great occurs. That small something for me, was the guy, about whom I subsequently learned nothing, who went out and planted all those small crosses as tributes to the dead of Columbine. And I never would have heard anything about him, if his act hadn t provoked outrage because he included memorials to the killers. In the end they made him take them down, because the scene was just too controversial and divisive, so close to the event, but the impression was left just the same.
This, to me, was mildly awe-inspiring. This, to me, was something to stop and stare at because it was so foreign to me. I don t know what angle this man was coming from, but I remember being struck by the strident neutrality of his position, combined with the compassion, the drive, the need.
Because I don t think I recognize that. I don t see them going together. I connect all grand gestures to "ferver, to ideology of some kind, to taking sides.
This guy represented, to me, and perhaps this is idealized, but he represented to me purity of motivation. He had a desire to tangibly express sadness and loss of humanity, and he didn t differentiate between the pain suffered by some parties compared to others. This was man seeming, for a change, to understand pain universally, in sharp contrast to our well-honed capacity for inflicting it shamelessly.
As it was, as it is, I stand back, in admiration of a guy like that wood carver, who was capable of holding a view of humanity that I possibly could not.
That was where the idea of Will and his carved monuments was born. Out of the idea that someone could be moved by human suffering that was not directly his. Someone who, damaged by fate in his own experience, became capable of inarticulate compassion and connection to the suffering of the whole of the outside world.
It s like one of those stories of a person who gets hit by lightning and then can pick up radio stations on his fillings or the metal plate in his head, only Will was a guy who was struck by sadness and could thereafter pick up on other people s sadness. And it caused him trouble, because that is just too weird behavior for most people to grasp.
I m one of those people. It was a good book for me to write, because I would be one of the skeptics. I would figure the guy leaving the strange memorials all over the place had some kind of freakish ulterior purpose. I wound up being somewhat convinced over time, over the process of writing, of the hope that s there in a life like Will s. I didn t know what I was going to do with him until way late in the book. And I wouldn t have been able to pull him up out of the water if I didn t "feel like it. I hope the books, difficult books like these, achieve that kind of thing with the readers too, help them to believe in things a little bit that they didn t previously believe in. And I don t mean wizards and fairies. I mean, the possibility of life, where maybe lifedidn t seem like the natural, obvious outcome.
But now, having done that and having done another couple of "trouble books since then as well -- I really, really, really need to get back to another literary therapy I believe in utterly. If one of my narrators doesn t make me laugh pretty soon, I believe I am going to go berserk. We need all kinds of books, but I personally couldn t survive without a steady diet of laughs.
Before I finish, could I please take the opportunity to thank the cast of thousands who have done all the dirty work for me at Harper all these years, including a long trail of editor bodies I ve left lying in the road, and the two who are still standing, Elise Howard and Ginee Seo. They have always given me absolutely free reign to go wherever I might, even though none of us really knew where that might be. And, of course, Bill Morris, who was just a young kid in the mail room when I showed up.
A note from Chris Lynch, about "Freewill."..
Suicide as a legacy is a theme that has nagged me for ages and ages. I would sneak up on the story every once in a while, then retreat again. But I sort of always figured I would know when the time was right, when the story was right.
The thing that finally triggered it was Columbine. It is not a Columbine story. There is only one connection that linked them in my mind, and that was the tributes to the dead. That impulse, and the same behavior at tragedies all over, became more and more of a focus for me because Ifind the aftermath of tragedy, the wake of the flood, to be the deeply moving part of any story. I read about one man who had left crosses for the dead -- including the shooters -- and could not stop thinking about grief, and motivation, and interpretation. About how insanely complicated every gesture can be.
And when that is combined with
Review
"Lynch remains one of young adult literature's most intriguing writers." Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)
Review
"Intense, nightmarish storytelling: sometimes wildly funny, sometimes heartbreaking, entirely memorable." Kirkus Reviews
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"Lynch successfully takes the reader into the soul of somebody isolated by grief." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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"Lynch's control over Will's narration is superb...There's a real Holden Caufield echo." The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
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"In this excellent, disturbing novel of redemption, Chris Lynch explores grief so stunning it strips meaning from life." Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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"Lynch guides the reader through this complex internal journey with a remarkably light touch." Horn Book (starred review)
Synopsis
Why Are You Here?
Will is supposed to be a pilot, to skim above surfaces. But instead he's in wood shop. He doesn't know why -- or maybe he just doesn't want to admit the truth.
What Are You Doing?
He used to make beautiful things: gnomes, whirligigs, furniture. Now he's making strange wooden totems that seem to serve no purpose.
What Do You Know?
When a series of teen suicides occurs in town, they all have one thing in common: beautifully carved wooden tributes that appear just after or just before the deaths.
What Will You Do?
Will's afraid he knows who's responsible for the deaths. And lurking just behind that knowledge is another secret, so explosive that he might not be able to face it and live....
About the Author
Chris Lynch is the Printz Honor Award-winning author of several highly acclaimed young adult novels, including Freewill, Gold Dust, Iceman, Gypsy Davy, and Shadowboxer, all ALA Best Books for Young Adults. He is also the author of Extreme Elvin, Whitechurch, and All The Old Haunts. He holds an M.A. from the writing program at Emerson College. He mentors aspiring writers and continues to work on new literary projects. He lives in Boston and in Scotland.