Receive Smog City Formulated By Rebecca McNutt Volume

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In the end, I didn't really enjoy reading this book, It had a lot of potential even though it started out really slow, There were a lot of good ideas that could have made such a good story, but I just didn't enjoy the writing style and how the characters behaved.
It just didn't feel realistic to me, When this book is maybe rewritten thoroughly it could be a good book, I really hope someone does this because it would be a waste of ideas, Smog City is an amazing novel in many ways that it was written by a twelve year old tackling a hostile environment makes it all the more so.
At that age I would have struggled to construct a sentence, let alone a book! This book was a fun read for me, The main characters, Mandy and Alecto, become friends, I liked this book and I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, The story was not what I expected to read from the a cover of this book but I'm glad I read it! I received this book from LibraryThing giveaway and this is my honest review "What's on your corrupted mind, pretty little Sydney Tar Ponds"

I got a free PDF copy of Smog City from the author, and after reading it I have all sorts of questions racing through my mind.


Smog City is depressing and horrific and definitely not a book for younger readers, but I do have to say, it's certainly creative from an eccentric photojournalist to a toxic waste site personification with a collection of snuff reels in his house, this book sort of wipes away the facade of Cape Breton's green, cheery tourist attraction atmosphere.


Mandy is a deeply troubled person and her jock older brother's accident that took his life leaves her parents griefstricken, They're hardly characters because they're at work constantly, in fact they're just figures who appear once or twice very briefly, Mandy finds herself home alone most days and nights, but at eighteen years old she's allowed to wander her Canadian small town home as she pleases, The place she spends the most time at is the Sydney Tar Ponds, a toxic chemical estuary near her own home, Her only friend is Wendy, the high school gossip and immature girl who spends most of her time airing out the dirty laundry of her friends and neighbors.


One day Mandy meets a kid who appears to be her own age named Alecto, Alecto smokes cigarettes and seems to hardly ever leave the Tar Ponds site, He comes across to Mandy as fragile, weak, thin and depressed, so, suspecting that somebody is abusing him, she takes pity on him and gets to know him some more after a few days.
On one night, Mandy does something horrible and Alecto turns out to be more helpful than she ever expected, She also finds out that he's not a person, and this fact sort of makes her snap, She and Alecto become best friends, but when Mandy questions Alecto about his personal life, he refuses to tell,

As the novel goes on, it's towards the middle of it where it takes a turn from being whimsically eccentric towards being disturbing and depressing, Mandy starts getting crazier and crazier, in fact she quits her newspaper job, acts childish and her family leaves her behind her seemingly antisocial behavior covers up her sadness and she avoids the world at all costs, snapping at people who try to speak to her and taking up Alecto's habit of chainsmoking.
Alecto starts questioning his own life, experimenting with selfharm and suicide so that by the time he sees Mandy again, he doesn't just look sick, he has bandages wrapped around his arms.
It's implied that he used some sort of sharp object to cut open his wrists so that he'd bleed to death, but he survives the ordeal,

Mandy might be just hallucinating Alecto because time and time again she questions whether or not he's imaginary, I felt sorry for Alecto but he freaked me out, especially since he seems to be telekinetic and he has an obsession with lessthancheerful home movies and false nostalgia.
I think my favorite character though was Mrs, Matthias, she was hilarious but menacing and the perfect portrayal of a nosy neighbor! Mearth just left me disturbed, she tortures poor Alecto literally and drives Mandy hopelessly insane through the whole book, and even before she's introduced as a character, McNutt has her lurking in the shadows from the beginning.


It was so sad! I can't believe how sad it was, it made me want to dig through my old laptop photos and have a slideshow and it made me realize just how quick time passes and just how cruel some things can be.
At the same time, it had a happy ending and I loved the way it all worked out, Smog City might be selfpublished, but you wouldn't know it by reading it since it was so wellwritten and there wasn't a single spelling mistake, This is an intriguing book and I was transported very quickly to the tar ponds site I love the smell of tar assuming the STP smells the same as I know.
The storyline is unique the personification of a hazardous waste site befriending a human being, This is a fast paced book, snappy dialogue and believable characters, I lamented, along with Mandy at the demise of proper photography and the analogue world now all but buried under the ubiquitous and homogenising digital age,

For me, a good book is one where life is an irritating interruption to my reading of it, This was such a book and I enjoyed reading it very much, The book itself I read borrowed a copy from a friend was wonderfully quirky I always knew what page I was on thanks to the big page numbers and, if I read correctly, the excellent art work was done in MS Paint no mean feat.


This book is well worth reading and I recommend it, A remarkable achievement for anyone let alone ayear old girl, I bought a copy so I will offer some honest criticism, Instead of just dropping the names of classic rock songs, do more with them like explaining how they affect the scene, For example Joe Hill in sitelinkThe Fireman references the Dire Straits song "Romeo amp Juliet" several times with the Fireman asking"you and me babe,how about it" More effective is his use of the movie "Mary Poppins" and

three songs from the movie.
A friend of mine spent a summer in the's in Sidney, Nova Scotia, I will lend him the book and see if I can get his thoughts, He already told me about his difficulties in growing a garden and how interested his neighbors were in his efforts, I was very kindly given a review ecopy of this book by the author,

Starting out, I had some vague and poorly thought out idea that I was to/should review this book without alluding to the authors age, This soon proved impossible, because it is quite an accomplishment to put something like this to paper, starting out at an age where most of us struggle with complete and coherent sentences.
The surreal, oddly occasionally violent story doesn't indicate a teenage author either, but is quite challenging at times, The embodiment/manifestation into human form "representation" of hazardous waste sites/polluted areas and the main characters reaction to them I never really got used to or got right in my head.
I jumped at the first statement of "I like pollution!" uttered even before she's aware of the "representations" and befriending the chainsmoking and Windexdrinking Alecto, the Sydney Tar Ponds made flesh.
The embodiment of "Mearth" is also hard to comprehend, vicious and ugly, brought rather an old testament god, gotten up on the wrong side and vengeful, than a mellow earth mother to mind.
Throw in a resentment for the environmental movement and in particular "hippies" into the mix and the mind is boggled even more,

Lots of references to's music, analog technology cameras and celluloid film especially and a huge dislike of modern technology, digital media and constant online presence actually makes even the young protagonist nostalgic for a time she really hasn't experienced! But, this is of course not the only contradictory theme in the book as stated above.


Certainly, this is a selfpublished first, by a very young writer and it shows in places, surprisingly little in typos/mistakes, but the dialog and there's a lot! is a little bit awkward in places but quite good in others.
The ending chapters could have used some editing, things started to go in circles there for a while, The epilogue is really good and added a lot to the story and experience, I'm very curious to see what later offerings will bring, .