Please Ignore Vera Dietz Book Review (FINAL)

Please Ignore Vera Dietz Book Review

            Please Ignore Vera Dietz was written by A. S. King. Vera, the main character, is a high school senior that lives with just her father. The reason that she only lives with her father is because her mother, who was a stripper, left Vera and Ken, her dad, when Vera was rather young and ran off with a foot doctor to Las Vegas. The Kahns live next to Vera and Ken and they have a son named Charlie that is around Vera’s age and in the same grade. They hang out and become best friends. This friendship lasts until the two of them get into high school when the cool kids known also as Detention Heads notice Charlie and take him under their wing. This leads Vera to being left to fend for herself in high school without the protection and guidance of Charlie. After some confrontations with Charlie and the Detention Heads, Vera is scared that Charlie will spread the information that her mom was a stripper around school. Because of this, Vera decides to simply do what the title of the book is, she ignores everybody at school and hopes that everybody else in her high school will do the same to her. This leads to a depressing life where all she does is go to high school and her job at Pagoda Pizza, but she is happy about it. That happiness lasts until Charlie dies under mysterious circumstances. After Charlie’s death, Vera starts to mend her situation and relationship with Ken. Vera knows all of the details about what happened but will she reveal them?

            Setting was very important in this book as it helped to create many different scenes in the book that were very suspenseful with very vivid descriptions that helped the reader to feel like they were actually in the novel. The description of Vera’s home along with the Kahn’s home and the other homes of the neighbors is a very good example of the intricate descriptions that King uses in this book. The description is as follows, “The order, starting at the hairpin curve, was the pagoda, the Ungers, us, the Kahns, and then the Millers way down the hill, on the other side of the road, and then the lake” (King 33-34). This description of the neighborhood that Charlie and Vera both live in makes the reader feel like they are actually there experiencing this exact scene with Vera as she is describing it. The visual quality that comes from King’s intricate description of the neighborhood is impeccable. The reason that this quote is intricate is that without the Kahns being so close it would have been harder for Charlie and Vera to get together and build a bond. That is not the only reason, but the layout of the neighborhood does help. The setting successfully sets up and explains how and why Charlie and Vera became such close friends. The reason was simply that their two houses were the closet to everything else in the entire neighborhood so they would naturally attract to each other. Besides the description of the setting of the neighborhood, the description of the pagoda as being a failure, also being seen as a symbol of the town is a very interesting visual quality in this novel that really helps to put the reader into the novel and experience what is happening. Setting adds many important visual qualities to Please Ignore Vera Dietz and King’s writing style really helps to immerse the reader into the story.

            The characters are also a very important in this novel as each individual character brings a different perspective to the table. Vera is the kid that slips under everybody’s radar. Charlie is the person that everybody knows but he only knows the people that matter to him. Jenny is the person that will use others in any way possible to get some sort of advantage over others. Bill Corso is the one kid that was pushed along by the school, he never learned how to properly read, and he is a senior. That is sad! In short, there is a lot of variety in the personalities of the characters that are in Please Ignore Vera Dietz. When Bill Corso tries to pretend to read is a superb description of his character as a whole. His attempt is, “‘You…are a silly little boy…said the…Lord of the Flies. Just an ig…igno…’” (King 277). While this description of Bill might be funny and that was probably one of the reasons that King included it in her novel, she is also getting to a very important point with Bill. There are people, like Bill that simply are moved along the pipeline from kindergarten to high school to graduation without knowing how to properly read, write, or do basic arithmetic. What King does by having the diversity in characters is that she shows how different personalities can work together to do good things; however, in this case they were bad things. King uses the characters to show that the traits that the characters exhibit in the book also exist in real life. That is how the characters in King’s novel are extremely important.

            Another important theme in Please Ignore Vera Dietz is the idea of forgiveness and how people can wait for a long time to finally forgive someone after they have been severely hurt by that person. This can be seen in the therapy sessions between Vera and Ken where they finally forgive each other about what happened to Vera’s mom, Cindy Sidny, which led them to finally remove all her possessions that were still in their house with the hope that she would come back and with the fear that if the items were removed, she would never come back. A more prominent scene of forgiveness is with Charlie and trying to save Vera from encountering the same fate that he ended up having. This is also, why he does things such as calling the cops when James and Vera were in the car together. He wants Vera to accept his forgiveness for him not being there for her when she needed him and for completely shunning her. Vera sees all of this happen through ghost of Charlie that appear and attempt to crowd and smother her. This happens her in the bathroom at school one day and it goes back on the pure genius that King has in creating a scene. Vera was in the bathroom when, “Through the thousand Charlies, …I walk slowly toward the sink, against the weight of them. …in Charli’s messy handwriting [on the mirror is] HELP ME” (King 275-276). Charlie’s ghosts write “help me” on the mirror because they want Vera to read the napkins that Charlie left for her so that she can fully understand what exactly happened the night Zimmerman’s Pet Store was burned down. The ghosts are in Vera’s life because they want Vera to find the letter. It is similar to ghosts that haunt certain buildings or similar places, the ghosts are haunting that certain area because they want something to change or be fixed. Charlie is the same way except that his ghosts are haunting Vera instead of a building. Eventually this haunting does end up paying off because Vera finds out what really happened with Zimmerman’s Pet Store. By doing this, she essentially put Charlie’s ghosts to rest. King through the use of the various forgiveness scenes in Please Ignore Vera Dietz shows how powerful forgiveness can truly be.

            All in all this was an OK book. King does a good job in the descriptions of the book but in my opinion that is about the only good thing that she does in this book. It was quite hard for me to write this other part of the Please Ignore Vera Dietz Book Review in a neutral manner but I was able to do that. King has no understanding of what a typical senior in high school’s class load is. Seriously, Vera just needs to study for Modern Social Thought and Vocabulary!! I understand that I go to a private school and Vera goes to a public school but in comparison, a private and public school are not that different. Besides that, there are a few other things that she does a pathetic job in portraying as serious problems for teenagers but not much. Besides that, overall it was an OK book. (2 stars out of 5.)