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Read Aloud Virginia - Book Store - The Underneath
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List Price: $29.95
Our Price: $19.77
Your Save: $ 10.18 ( 34% )
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Audio
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Audio CD
EAN: 9780743572088
Format: Audiobook
ISBN: 0743572084
Label: Simon & Schuster Audio
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Audio
Number Of Items: 5
Publication Date: 2008-05-06
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Audio
Reading Level: Ages 9-12
Studio: Simon & Schuster Audio
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Editorial Reviews:
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There is nothing lonelier than a cat who has been loved, at least for a while, and then abandoned on the side of the road. An abandoned calico cat, about to have kittens, hears the achingly lonely howl of a chained up, abused hound dog deep in the bayou. She dares to find him in the forest and the hound dares to befriend this cat, this feline, this creature he is supposed to hate. They are an unlikely pair, about to become an unlikely family. Ranger urges the cat to hide underneath the porch, to raise Sabine and Puck there because Gar-Face, the man living inside the house, will surely use her or her kittens as alligator bait should he find them. But, they are safe in the underneath...as long as they stay in the underneath. Kittens, however, are notoriously curious creatures. And one kitten's one moment of curiosity sets off a chain of events that is astonishing, remarkable, and enormous in its meaning. In the tradition of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, Flannery O'Connor, and Carson McCullers, Kathi Appelt spins a harrowing yet keenly sweet tale about the power of love (and its opposite, hate), the fragility of happiness -- and the importance of making good on your promises.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Flattened by The Underneath
Comment: The Underneath: My Reaction
It must be a good book. I've never finished a book before and been absolutely, compulsively driven to write a review. I am this time. But I hated the book.
The YA authors in my writing group agreed to each read one of the books nominated for the YA National Book Award. My choice/assignment was The Underneath by Kathi Appelt. I was completely excited: an award nominee about dogs and cats! Just my cup 'o tea.
Based on the following reviews, I guess I was expecting a beautiful, lyrical story about love for/between some animals. Thirty pages in, I felt slam-dunked.
"A mysterious and magical story; poetic yet loaded with suspense."-- Louis Sachar, Newbery Medal-winning author of Holes
"The Underneath is as enchanting as a hummingbird, as magical as the clouds." -- Cynthia Kadohata, Newbery Medal-winning author of Kira-Kira
"Rarely do I come across a book that makes me catch my breath, that reminds me why I wanted to be a writer -- to make of life something beautiful, something enduring. The Underneath is a book of ancient themes -- love and loss and betrayal and redemption -- woven together in language both timeless and spellbinding. A classic."-- Alison McGhee, author of the New York Times bestselling Someday
"Kathi Appelt's novel, The Underneath, reads like a ballad sung."-- Ashley Bryan, Hans Christian Anderson Award Nominee and Three-Time Coretta Scott King Award Medalist
All writers I respect. A lyrical story of redemption.
The writing is lyrical, alright. It's downright stunning prose, so much so that the only two comparisons I can make are Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison. And the magic realism is comparable, too. It's a beautiful thing. It reads like a song.
But still, I hated it.
The song is so painful and so awful and so filled with despair, abuse, abandonment, death and revenge, that there's no room for redemption. I'm used to pain and sadness in stories. Conflict is what keeps us reading, right? But here, I had to keep setting the book down because it was too painful to go on.
Most of us are familiar with the phenomenon that watching animals suffer in a story or movie is worse than watching humans suffer. All too true in this novel. I felt as if my heart were wrenched out, flattened with a meat hammer and stuffed back into my chest cavity. Not once, not twice, but again and again and again. By the end of the book, my heart had no room to celebrate redemption. It only had room to lie there, flattenend but pulsing, relieved that the death and abuse and despair were over and that the three characters who had survived the course of the story could live in peace.
I remember, decades ago, seeing "The Fox and Hound" in the movie theater. When the hound falls off the bridge deep into the ravine to his certain death, I remember as a kid being acutely aware of the fact that in order to survive watching the story, I had to emotionally detach from the falling dog. I couldn't bear it. The dog survived, barely, but my heart had detached from pain too great to bear.
By the end of The Underneath, I had detached so many times, I had no attachment left.
The story is omniscient, but we have a third-person close view of nine different characters. Refreshingly, only one of them, is human. That's my favorite part of the story, besides the language.
The book crushed my heart. It must be a good book, if a week after I finished it, I am compelled to respond to it because of its emotional impact. But I still hate it.
Maybe it's not a story for obsessed animal lovers. It's just too painful. Maybe it's a great story if all creatures involved are metaphorical or just that--creatures. Maybe. This much I know: I sure don't ever want to read it again. I don't need that much pain.
Customer Rating:
Summary: I Wanted to Like It ...
Comment: I really wanted to like this book. The story is really amazing, and the prose so lyrical and haunting. The author truly has a way with words. It just wasn't my cup of tea, I suppose. There is a beautiful review here that made me want to like it even more. Maybe this would be a good book club choice, so that, through the discussion, you can come to enjoy it more. I just found it a bit too meandering for me.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Out from Underneath
Comment: The mournful, soulful song of the chained bloodhound, Ranger, attracts the abandoned calico cat, and she joins him underneath Gar Face's cabin in a remote bayou. The suffering Ranger is delighted and charmed by his companion, but he warns her to stay out of sight of the vicious
Gar Face. When she produces two gray kittens, whom Ranger names Sabine and Puck, he happily becomes their guardian too. He knows, however, that Gar Face would use the kittens as alligator bait if he discovers them. There are two other inhabitants of the swamp whose lives become entwined with the small family. One is the enormous, old Alligator King that Gar Face is obsessed with catching. The other is the ancient Grandmother Moccasin, a lamai, half human and half serpent, who had been imprisoned beneath a pine tree for a thousand years until lightning strikes the tree and releases her.
The villains in this book are breath-takingly scary, yet the author manages to make their villainy understandable. Gradually revealing their wretched histories, small slivers are sympathy are evoked despite their deeds. The artist's wonderful pencil illustrations enhance the story and express misery and anger in turn. This is a truly unique, compelling story which shows that the most twisted of characters might still be capable of redemptive action. A thoroughly stellar story.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Wasted Potential
Comment: I listened to this on audio CD and I really wanted to like it because it's a National Book Award finalist. (And it's about kittens. Who doesn't like kittens?) The story should have been simple and touching but it was over-done. I kept wanting it to be over and it was a chore to keep listening. I can't imagine how young children with short attention spans would react to it. I'm twenty-six and I couldn't take it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Fantasy/Reality/Love/Loss
Comment: Wow - I just finished The Underneath. It is an amazing combination of fantasy and reality, with characters and a story that can tug your heartstrings and keep you reading and wondering. It is hard to talk in detail about this book without giving some things away, but I will say it is very well written, one of the most unusual books you will ever read, and I recommend it highly.
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