The Book Review Club NOV - Teach Me by R.A Nelson

Publisher: Penguin Aus
Pub. Date: March 22nd 2007
Age Range: Young Adult
Pages: 272
Format: paperback
Source of copy: from publisher - Penguin Aus

What happens when a high school student and her teacher cross that line?

Teach Me by R. A. Nelson is a powerful debut novel that readers will not be able to put down. From the very first page, Nine speaks in a voice that is at once raw, honest, direct, and unusually eloquent. "There has been an earthquake in my life," she says, inviting you inside an experience that fascinates everyone-an affair between teacher and student-and giving a personal answer to the question: How does this happen?

R. A. Nelson's strong writing is paired with a story we all want to hear, resulting in a novel that will speak to every teenager. A novel about a love so intense that the person you're with becomes your world, and when you lose that person, you lose your world.



This book was so awesome I could squeal all day. A perfect combo of truth and lies, love and betrayal, passion and anger, poetry and science, Teach Me was a true work of art that would reach out to not only teenagers but adults as well.

Teach Me was the book of many firsts - first time stepping into the world of poems and inconclusive dreams, first time falling deep into forbidden love, first time having the heart shattered and first time realizing the true meaning of life. The story grabbed your attention at the very first page with the seemingly bizarre but interesting protagonist - Caroline, or Nine as she called herself. There were no chapters at all. The book was divided into many different parts with a very poetic title for each, allowing the author to switch between very different scenes and the readers to explore various sides of Nine's story.

The devlopement of the story was amazing. At first you got this feeling of a very elegant novel where everything was gentle, sweet, delicate. Then came the passion, the desire, the addiction, pushing things to the verge of explosion. The change of voice was so smooth you hardly recognize the difference. It was still Nine, the smart and outstanding girl who tried to find the answer to the cause of her heartbreak. Sometimes what was happening was vague hence incomprehensible but that only made you wanted to read more and more. The book became unputdownable just then.

Nine wasn't a typical girl. Her personalities changed during the process of her story. Just like the book itself, on the first half all you saw was an intelligent girl who accidentally got herself involved in a relationship with her teachers yet things were under control . The rest of the book, on the other hand showed a confused and outrageous Nine who would do anything and everything to break the ones who had made her life this anguish. As for Mr. Mann, I wasn't really impressed by him initially, he just struck me as some jerk who took advantage of kids. But there was his side of the story too, with a hurtful twist that completed his character.

Overall this book was an impressive read of two people who fell in love and unconsciously taught each other things that were, hard to accept, but necessary to lead a real life. It was sad, almost too painful so if you have a faint heart, think twice before you pick it up

Rating: 5/5