Seventeen-year-old Richie is suffering from SUTHY (Somebody Up There Hates You) syndrome; hospice expects he won’t live longer than a month. Narrator Noah Galvin doesn’t hold back on Richie’s dark, sarcastic tone, especially as he sneers at the sappy harpist whose music “seems a bit premature,” especially for dying teenagers like him and Sylvie. When fifteen-year-old Sylvie tells him she doesn’t want to die a virgin, a smile hovers in Galvin’s voice as Richie realizes it’s never too late to turn into the popular guy and life is “all about surprises.” Galvin also portrays the tender Sylvie and the nurses who care and grieve for the dying, but they form an emotional backdrop. Galvin keeps Richie in the foreground, noting his wonder, and anger, with heartbreaking intensity. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
Smart-mouthed, funny, and sometimes crude, Richard Casey is in most ways a typical seventeen-year-old boy. Except Ritchie has cancer, and he's spending his final days in a hospice unit. His mother, his doctors, and the hospice staff are determined to keep Ritchie alive as long as possible. But in this place where people go to die, Richie has plans to make the most of the life he has left.
Fifteen-year-old Sylvie, the only other hospice inmate under sixty, has plans of her own. What begins as camaraderie soon blossoms into love, and the star-crossed pair determine together to live life on their own terms in whatever time they have.
Hollis Season has created one of the most original voices in young adult literature, narrating a story that is unflinching, graphic, heart-breaking, funny, and above all, life-affirming.
Smart-mouthed, funny, and sometimes crude, Richard Casey is in most ways a typical seventeen-year-old boy. Except Ritchie has cancer, and he's spending his final days in a hospice unit. His mother, his doctors, and the hospice staff are determined to keep Ritchie alive as long as possible. But in this place where people go to die, Richie has plans to make the most of the life he has left.
Fifteen-year-old Sylvie, the only other hospice inmate under sixty, has plans of her own. What begins as camaraderie soon blossoms into love, and the star-crossed pair determine together to live life on their own terms in whatever time they have.
Hollis Season has created one of the most original voices in young adult literature, narrating a story that is unflinching, graphic, heart-breaking, funny, and above all, life-affirming.
Somebody Up There Hates You
Narrated by Noah Galvin
Hollis SeamonUnabridged — 6 hours, 19 minutes
Somebody Up There Hates You
Narrated by Noah Galvin
Hollis SeamonUnabridged — 6 hours, 19 minutes
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Overview
Smart-mouthed, funny, and sometimes crude, Richard Casey is in most ways a typical seventeen-year-old boy. Except Ritchie has cancer, and he's spending his final days in a hospice unit. His mother, his doctors, and the hospice staff are determined to keep Ritchie alive as long as possible. But in this place where people go to die, Richie has plans to make the most of the life he has left.
Fifteen-year-old Sylvie, the only other hospice inmate under sixty, has plans of her own. What begins as camaraderie soon blossoms into love, and the star-crossed pair determine together to live life on their own terms in whatever time they have.
Hollis Season has created one of the most original voices in young adult literature, narrating a story that is unflinching, graphic, heart-breaking, funny, and above all, life-affirming.
Editorial Reviews
Dying’s lousy at any age, but it’s even worse if, like Richie Casey, you’re 17. But even in hospice, a lot can happen in a short time, as Richie finds out. Indeed, an almost amazing amount: Richie’s uncle takes him out for a night of partying; girls start paying attention to him (and not just Sylvie, the 15-year-old across the hall); there are pranks and fistfights; and Richie gets a chance to be a normal teenager—or as normal as possible, given that he’s surrounded by nurses, never knows how he’ll feel next, and the annoying harpist in the lobby just keeps playing. In her YA debut, adult author Seamon balances the grim reality of teenagers with terminal cancer with the fact that, cancer or not, they’re still teens. Initially, Richie comes across as almost manic, but once readers settle deeper into the story, they will see Richie and Sylvie for who they are and understand that being near death doesn’t mean abandoning hope for the life that remains. Ages 14–up. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents. (Sept.)
“I read Somebody Up There Hates You in one great rush. This novel is funny, harrowing, and wildly profane. It had me crying with laughter on one page and then just plain crying on another.” --Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club“This is not just another teen-dying-of-cancer story. Seamon has created a smart-mouthed, funny, occasionally raunchy, very typical teen boy narrating the final days of his life in a way that is unflinching, graphic, at times funny, and at times heartbreaking. Readers will alternate between shaking their heads at his self-centeredness, laughing at his smart mouth, and reaching for tissues as Richard really learns what it means to grow up . . . Emotions are raw and painful but the story is a powerful and life-affirming look at what it means to grow up as your life is ending.” --VOYA“Even in hospice, a lot can happen in a short time . . . Being near death doesn’t mean abandoning hope for the life that remains.” --Publishers Weekly, starred review“Each character is vividly drawn, with a sharp, memorable voice that readers will love and remember . . . A fresh, inspiring story.” --Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Heartfelt . . . The language is raw and even profane at times, but hardly inappropriate given the circumstances . . . This novel is respectful of its serious subject matter, yet is an entertaining and heartening read.” --School Library Journal“Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look at two teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing, does its readers a generous service.” --Booklist“Here are some things Hollis Seamon knows: Life, for one, and the end of life, and how they are always partners. She knows what's sad, and she knows what's funny. And she knows what people need, and how it feels to be someone who worries he might not get to experience life fully before he goes. Knowing all that--and being able to write about it so simply, and beautifully, with such a lack of sentimentality--is already enough for one writer. That she is able to take this knowledge and, with it, inhabit a character--Richard, 17, in a hospice, paradoxically and wonderfully alive--is a kind of miracle.” --Richard Kramer, author of These Things Happen
“I read Somebody Up There Hates You in one great rush. This novel is funny, harrowing, and wildly profane. It had me crying with laughter on one page and then just plain crying on another.” --Will Schwalbe, author of The End of Your Life Book Club“This is not just another teen-dying-of-cancer story. Seamon has created a smart-mouthed, funny, occasionally raunchy, very typical teen boy narrating the final days of his life in a way that is unflinching, graphic, at times funny, and at times heartbreaking. Readers will alternate between shaking their heads at his self-centeredness, laughing at his smart mouth, and reaching for tissues as Richard really learns what it means to grow up . . . Emotions are raw and painful but the story is a powerful and life-affirming look at what it means to grow up as your life is ending.” --VOYA“Even in hospice, a lot can happen in a short time . . . Being near death doesn’t mean abandoning hope for the life that remains.”--Publishers Weekly, starred review“Each character is vividly drawn, with a sharp, memorable voice that readers will love and remember . . . A fresh, inspiring story.” --Kirkus Reviews, starred review“Heartfelt . . . The language is raw and even profane at times, but hardly inappropriate given the circumstances . . . This novel is respectful of its serious subject matter, yet is an entertaining and heartening read.” --School Library Journal“Seamon’s first young-adult novel is a tender, insightful, and unsentimental look at two teens in extremis. It brings light to a very dark place, and in so doing, does its readers a generous service.” --Booklist“Here are some things Hollis Seamon knows: Life, for one, and the end of life, and how they are always partners. She knows what's sad, and she knows what's funny. And she knows what people need, and how it feels to be someone who worries he might not get to experience life fully before he goes. Knowing all that--and being able to write about it so simply, and beautifully, with such a lack of sentimentality--is already enough for one writer. That she is able to take this knowledge and, with it, inhabit a character--Richard, 17, in a hospice, paradoxically and wonderfully alive--is a kind of miracle.” --Richard Kramer, author of These Things Happen
Seamon’s detail . . . is spot-on. Noah Galvin does an amazing job of voicing Richie.”
—Library Journal
Galvin’s narration captures the novel’s conversational, storytelling style and creates a compelling, unsentimental listening experience.”
—Booklist
02/15/2014
Seamon's debut novel is both heart wrenching and humorous. The story is told from the viewpoint of Richie, a 17-year-old boy living in a hospice unit. Richie—along with his partner in crime 15-year-old Sylvie—is determined to make sure he lives whatever days he has left to the fullest, whether it means breaking out Halloween night with his uncle or being propositioned by Marie Antoinette. Seamon's detail, from the showers to the family lounge area to the hospice unit, is spot-on. Noah Galvin does an amazing job of voicing Richie. VERDICT Older young adults and anyone who loved John Green's The Fault in Our Stars will want to give this book a try.—Jessi Brown, Huntington City Twp. P.L., IN
Gr 9 Up—Being 17 years old is hard enough, but being 17 with cancer can be downright depressing. It's a good thing Richard Casey has found a partner in crime in the mischievous Sylvie Calderone, the 15-year-old girl down the hall in their hospice ward. Staging a Halloween prank together helps take their minds off the harsh reality of their situation: both teenagers have been given less than a month to live. When Richie's mother falls ill with the flu, he finally gets the space he so desperately wants to act like every other teenage boy. Sprung from the hospital by his wacky Uncle Phil, the pair engage in a memorable night of All Hallows' Eve debauchery in the neighboring town of Hudson in upstate New York. Richie runs afoul of Sylvie's drunken father, however, with whom he's had earlier altercations. Things escalate when, back in the hospice unit, Sylvie announces to Richie her plans to lose her virginity with him. The hospital staff, charmed by the pair's romance, turn a blind eye as the two grow closer. The same cannot be said for Sylvie's father, who becomes increasingly unstable as his daughter deteriorates. This heartfelt novel turns out to be much more hopeful than macabre, despite the teens' terminal diagnoses. The language is raw and even profane at times, but hardly inappropriate given the circumstances. Richie can be a little corny, and his uncle is definitely over-the-top, but the book is mostly strengthened by its memorable supporting characters. This novel is respectful of its serious subject matter, yet is an entertaining and heartening read.—Ryan P. Donovan, New York Public Library
Seventeen-year-old Richie is suffering from SUTHY (Somebody Up There Hates You) syndrome; hospice expects he won’t live longer than a month. Narrator Noah Galvin doesn’t hold back on Richie’s dark, sarcastic tone, especially as he sneers at the sappy harpist whose music “seems a bit premature,” especially for dying teenagers like him and Sylvie. When fifteen-year-old Sylvie tells him she doesn’t want to die a virgin, a smile hovers in Galvin’s voice as Richie realizes it’s never too late to turn into the popular guy and life is “all about surprises.” Galvin also portrays the tender Sylvie and the nurses who care and grieve for the dying, but they form an emotional backdrop. Galvin keeps Richie in the foreground, noting his wonder, and anger, with heartbreaking intensity. S.W. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine
When you're surrounded by death, anything can look like a good opportunity. Death is all around 17-year-old Richie Casey. Diagnosed with cancer, he's spending his final days in hospice care in upstate New York. He's weak. He can't eat. He's also a wiseass with a biting sense of humor, and he's persuasive enough to convince even the toughest nurse to let him do what he wants. Seamon's debut for teens follows Richie over 10 days leading up to his 18th birthday. His ne'er-do-well uncle breaks him out for a wild, cathartic, drunken, lust-filled night on the town in a wheelchair to celebrate Cabbage Night (the night before Halloween). He pursues his girlfriend down the hall, Sylvie, who is also dying from cancer. Each character is vividly drawn, with a sharp, memorable voice that readers will love and remember. While there is plenty of death to go around, the novel's tone shifts from dark to light when opportunity presents itself to narrator Richie. Both the characters and readers empathize with his urge to break out and experience life despite his constraints and the consequences that might befall him. His ups and downs are what power the plot, and readers come to learn that Ritchie isn't full of joie de vivre. Instead, he's full of fight, and that's what makes him so admirable and memorable. A fresh, inspiring story about death and determination. (Fiction. 14 & up)
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170040148 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HighBridge Company |
| Publication date: | 09/03/2013 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
| Sales rank: | 1,121,094 |
Read an Excerpt
SOMEBODY UP THERE HATES YOU
a novel
By Hollis Seamon
ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL
Copyright © 2013 Hollis SeamonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61620-260-6
CHAPTER 1
I shit you not. Hey, I'm totally reliable, sweartogod. I, Richard Casey—aka the Incredible Dying Boy—actually do live, temporarily, in the very hospice unit I'm going to tell you about. Third floor, Hilltop Hospital, in the city of Hudson, the great state of New York.
Let me tell you just one thing about this particular hospice. Picture this: right in front of the elevator that spits people into our little hospice home, there is a harpist. No joke. Right there in our lobby, every damn day, this old lady with white hair and weird long skirts sits by a honking huge harp and strums her heart out. Or plucks, whatever. The harp makes all these sappy sweet notes that stick in your throat.
How weird is that? I mean, isn't that, like, a bit premature? Hey, we're not dead yet. But it's pretty amusing at times, in its own strange way, this whole harp thing. I can sit there in my wheelchair, on a good day, and watch people get off that elevator. They're here to visit their dying somebody and they walk right into our little lobby and that music hits them and they sort of stumble and wobble, go pale. They have got to be thinking, just for a second, that they've skipped right over the whole death and funeral mess and gone straight to heaven. Most of them back up at least three steps, and some of them actually press the elevator button or claw at its closed doors, trying to escape. It's easy to read their minds: they're not the ones dying, right? So why are they here? How did they end up in harp-land? It freaks them right out, and I just have to laugh. The nurses tell me that harp music is soothing and spiritual and good for the patients. Okay, I say, fine. Maybe for the 95 percent of the patients who are ancient, like sixty and above, it's good. But what about for me? Or Sylvie? Me and Sylvie, I say, we're kids. We're teenagers and we're dying, too, and what about our rights?
Okay, that's kind of harsh, I admit. Because the nurses really are sort of cool and they get all teary when I say that, because no one, and I mean no one, wants to think about kids dying. But we are, so I say, Deal with it. Everybody dies, dudes and dudettes. That's the name of the game.
But that's not what I want to talk about, really. Dying is pretty boring, if you get right down to it. It's the living here that's actually interesting, a whole lot more than I ever would have imagined when I first got tossed in here, kicking and cursing.
Anyway, there is some mad stuff that goes on. Like what me and Sylvie did, night before Halloween, right in front of that elevator. It was classic.
Okay, so maybe I better explain. My grandma—who isn't as old as you'd think, because the women in my family have babies real young, by mistake mostly—once told me that in New Jersey, when she was a kid, there was this amazing night-before-Halloween thing that they called Cabbage Night. On this night, parents actually sent their kids out into the night to go crazy. Grandma says that there was only one Cabbage Night rule in her house: be home by midnight. Even on a school night! I mean, you can do a whole lot of very bad and very funny stuff between sunset—let's say around six—and midnight, right? Here's Grandma's list of stuff they'd do: run through people's yards and leap over their fences, screaming like banshees; throw eggs at everything and everybody in sight; put dog poop in paper bags, light the bags on fire and throw them on someone's front porch, then watch the homeowner, usually the dad if there's one around, stamp out the fires and spray himself knee-deep in shit; hit kids with sacks of flour until everybody is white as ghosts; steal anything that strikes your fancy and isn't nailed down; tip over gravestones; tie nerdy kids to gravestones and leave them there until about 11:58; break empty beer bottles—after you drink the beer somebody's cool uncle bought you—on curbs and threaten to cut other kids' throats; set out nails point-up on the streets, hoping to pierce car tires; and—well, whatever kids could think of. I mean, it's just so unbelievable to me that the parents let this stuff go on, year after year. Grandma says that when she was a kid, she came home at midnight every year bruised, covered in yolk, flour and beer, half-drunk and all the way exhausted. And here's the best thing: no one cared. In fact, her parents hadn't even bothered to wait up for her. Grandma says her folks figured, what the hey, better the kids get this shit out of their systems once a year than dribble out bits of badness every other day on the calendar. So they just said, "Go ahead on and get it over with. Just don't kill anybody, okay?"
I swear, this is all relevant to me and Sylvie's own little Cabbage Night performance because, as I believe I mentioned, we're kids, hospice hostages or not.
Luckily, that was one of the days that Sylvie was feeling strong enough to get up. Or she made herself strong enough, because I'd been bugging her for three days, telling her how funny this whole thing was going to be. Anyway, we waited until 5:30 p.m., October 30. The harp lady knocks off, unless someone requests her services, at 5:00 p.m. And 5:30 is when most of the long-faced loved ones show up to visit. And the nurses are real busy with supper trays and whatnot. So here's what we did.
We donned our preplanned, not-so-gay attire in our separate rooms, and then we wheeled ourselves quietly into the little lobby and we took up the harpy's usual space. We sat in our wheelchairs with, like, insane death mask makeup on our faces—pale green with big black circles around our eyes and streaks of red dripping from our lips. (One of Sylvie's little brothers brought her a vampire makeup kit and had the sense to keep his trap shut about it. Good kid.) And we had my collector's item Black Sabbath T-shirts on, and Sylvie—it surprised me that she had the energy, but the girl was really into it, I guess—she had made a big red devil fork thing out of an IV pole. She'd actually painted the whole thing with nail polish, a real project, and she was holding on to that. And I'd put one of my uncle's rave tapes—all screaming cool distortion—into the CD player on my lap, and we blasted that sucker every time some poor fool stepped off the elevator. And I held up my sign—GOING DOWN—THIS MEANS YOU!!!!!—written in fake flames. Whenever somebody gasped and backed up, me and Sylvie, we cackled and screeched like insane demons.
Okay, so it was just a childish joke. Funny as all hell, though. But Sylvie—that girl is much tougher than you'd think, given she's about five feet nothing and bald—she took it maybe a smidge too far. See, she'd planned something she didn't tell me about, something totally in the Cabbage Night tradition that she'd come up with on her own and kept quiet about. And she pulled it off without blinking an eye.
Here's what Sylvie did: she reached behind her back and pulled out a cigarette lighter and three boxes of Kleenex. She was quick as anything. She clicked the lighter and lit those babies up—one, two, three—and threw them down on the floor. No shit! Real flames, shooting all over the place. For about one millisecond. Then all hell really did break loose. Nurses and doctors and custodians and volunteers and counselors and food service dudes and probably the priests and rabbis, too—there are always about six guys in black wandering our little hallway—they all came running and shouting, and about nine thousand feet stomped out those three little fires.
And me and Sylvie, we howled. We laughed our asses off, nearly fell out of our chairs. We just could not stop, even when everyone started yelling at us and telling us to go back to our rooms and not come out again. Because that was even funnier—them sending us to our rooms like little kids. Some punishment. I mean, what were they going to do, kill us? Sentence us to death?
But, really, the best part for me was when one of the visitors, Mrs. Elkins's son—I know him, I played gin rummy with him in the visitors' lounge once—grabbed me by the arm and screamed in my face: "What's the matter with you, Richie? Where's your respect? What the hell is the matter with you?"
And I got to say one of my favorite lines, the one I pull out umpteen times a day, whenever some new priest or therapist or rabbi or nurse or intern or floor-washer or visitor or whoever asks me what's wrong with me. They can't ever seem to quite get it. Obviously, I'm way too young to be here, so what's the story? Here's how these conversations always play out: They go, "Why are you here? What's wrong with you, son?" And I go —straight face, big innocent eyes—"I have SUTHY Syndrome." And when they go all blank and say, essentially, "Huh?" I get to say it again. "SUTHY Syndrome. It's an acronym." Some of them don't even know what that means, but I always wait a beat and then spell it out: "I've got Somebody Up There Hates You Syndrome."
You know, it's really a pretty good diagnosis, don't you think? For me, for Sylvie, for anybody our age who ends up here and places like it, usually after what our obits will soon call a "courageous battle with fill-in-the-blank."
How else you going to account for us? SUTHY is the only answer that makes any damn sense.
* * *
Anyway, that was the last time I saw Sylvie come out of her room for a couple days. I think it took a lot out of her, all that preparation and excitement. I mean, I can't pretend to know the girl all that well since we just met when we both ended up here. I got here first, and she showed up a day or so later, and we met in the hall and both asked, exactly the same minute, sweartogod, what all of us long-term hospital brats ask one another: "What you in for, man?" And she said—because, like I said, she's tougher than me, really, and never beats around bushes—"I'm here because the shitheads think I'm dying. But I'm not." And I said, because I get, like, tongue-tied sometimes around girls, especially cool ones like Sylvie, I said, "Yeah, me too." But I didn't know which part I was "me too-ing"—the dying or the not. It's sometimes not so clear-cut as you'd think, despite the term terminal. I mean, who can really say?
Anyway, at least Sylvie got to get in trouble on Cabbage Night, like any un-SUTHY-stricken kid. When her family arrived on the scene, her father bawled her out for, like, an hour; I heard him. Then he lashed into the little bro who'd supplied the makeup, and the kid ran out of Sylvie's room like a scared rabbit. That man has one mad-ass temper. Sylvie's mother yelled at her, too, and then sat in the hall and cried.
But let me say this right now: it was so worth it. Those flames, for just a second, they were real. Hot and bright and totally real, and for a few minutes afterward you could smell smoke instead of stale hospital air. Real smoke. And, hey, Sylvie got to wear makeup, and that was a real plus. I know she liked the makeup. She's a girl, you know, even if she looks like some Halloween joke now all the time. At least I can still see her, the real girl under the death mask.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from SOMEBODY UP THERE HATES YOU by Hollis Seamon. Copyright © 2013 Hollis Seamon. Excerpted by permission of ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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