Alan Goco
Book Review: The Other Side of the River
Separation of St. Joseph and Benton Harbor Are two Michigan towns so close, but yet so different from each other. While St. Joseph is a Prosperous community by a lakeshore infested with 95 percent of people that are white, and Benton Harbor is a impecunious small town with no lakeshore crawling with 92 percent of people who are black. The separation of the town is caused by the St. Joseph lake. One day a young adult’s body was found floating on the lake of St. Joseph it was the dead body of Eric McGinnis, and yet a black boy from Benton Harbor. As the 2 communities grow farther apart emotions start to increase. Family, Friends, and Police official struggle to uncover who, what, when, and how Eric’s death had occurred.
The writing style of the author Alex Kotlowitz is very hard to apprehend. He goes back and forth from past to present. You really have to keep thinking on what is happening, or keep flipping back pages, but at the same time to me once I found out he was going back and forth I though it was pretty cool, but still hard to understand. He would also switch from different cases to different events that are happening in the book. Sometimes I would get lost in what was happening in the chapter that I was reading. His writing in the book had very mature and fowl content in it. The way he also described characters were very stereotypical.
There are 3 main characters in the book. There is Eric McGinnis, Ruth McGinnis, and Officer Reeves. I think that the author didn’t describe each of the characters very well. He would just show some emotions that the character felt, and not a lot about how they looked. In my opinion I though the only person the author really described was Eric, because he showed different times of when Eric was alive and when he was not. He wrote how Eric’s face was when the police pulled him out of the water, or the time they said what he wore or how he would stand out from the other kids in school, or what his emotions were from kind and gentle at times to mean and vicious.
The plot of the book was to try to find out what happened to Eric. During the book you find out many interesting things from how different the towns are, and how emotions start to rise, and how it effects each of the characters. The book shows how willing kids are to do what they must even when it involves hurting kids who are equally alike, but also different. It shows what kids must do to people who they don’t even know. It shows how one life affects 2 different towns.
So if you are around the ages of 14 to 40 I think this book would be a great choice for you. I don’t think this is meant for kids younger because it has fowl language and the book gets confusing at times. So if you like a boring book about 2 towns, death, investigating, and a lot of going back and forth in the book then I think this a very exciting book for you.
