The Sledding Hill by Chris Crutcher

Amazon Summary: "Billy Bartholomew has an audacious soul, and he knows it. Why? Because it's all he has left. He's dead. Eddie Proffit has an equally audacious soul, but he doesn't know it. He's still alive. These days, Billy and Eddie meet on the sledding hill, where they used to spend countless hours -- until Billy kicked a stack of Sheetrock over on himself, breaking his neck and effectively hitting tilt on his Earthgame. The two were inseparable friends. They still are. And Billy is not about to let a little thing like death stop him from hanging in there with Eddie in his epic struggle to get his life back on track."

This book is a little different from Crutcher's other books. Instead being told from the point of view of a character who is having problems, this story is told from the point of view of a very un-troubled, non-living boy. I've gotta give the man some credit for being unique. I'm sure that I've read something from the point of view of a dead person before (at least I think I have), but definitely not with this much description of what it's like to be dead. I think it would've been fine but for the mention that dead people lack emotion. That threw me for a loop. How could you care about anything without emotion? It didn't seem entirely consistant with spirit-Billy's actions. He was also all-knowing. But for some reason he stuck around to see what was going to happen next? Why wait when you can skip ahead in time and find out immediately? I think it needed some more fine tuning to make sense.

Other than that though, it's a pretty good read. I think I'd rather it were told from Eddie's perspective. It could still have spirit-Billy in it, but more as a side character than anything else. I think having him as the main character took away from the story. Cool idea, but not the best execution. The particular issue that this book focuses on is censorship. I foolishly though that censorship was long gone by now, but apparently not. Boy did that throw me off. I mean, who bans books because they have gay characters or bad language? What's the point? High school is way more inappropriate than any book I've ever read. People are deluding themselves if they think banning books is going to fix anything.

Anyway, the point is that while I loved the idea of this book, the execution left much to be desired for me. It's great that Crutcher wanted to experiment a bit, but I personally prefer his usual style.