Review: Nothing - Janne Teller

Title: Nothing
Author: Janne Teller
published by: Atheneum Books for Young Readers
pages: 227
My rating: 4/5




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About the author


 When Pierre-Anthon realizes there is no meaning to life, the seventh-grader leaves his classroom, climbs a tree, and stays there. His classmates cannot make him come down, not even by pelting him with rocks. So to prove to Pierre-Anthon that life has meaning, the children decide to give up things of importance. The pile starts with the superficial—a fishing rod, a new pair of shoes. But as the sacrifices become more extreme, the students grow increasingly desperate to get Pierre-Anthon down, to justify their belief in meaning. Sure to prompt intense thought and discussion, Nothing—already a treasured work overseas—is not to be missed.



Review:

"Nothing matters.
I have known that for a long time.
So nothing is worth doing.
I just realized that."

 This book is madness...
Before i even started reading it i thought it would be a 5/5 read for me, because i read a couple of reviews with some spoilers that said some of the most disturbing things agnes' classmates asked for and if something is said to be polemic and disturbing and crap like that i'm definitely in (idk, i have a thing for that type of things), but when they finished the "pile of significance" things got a little boring so i stopped reading the book a few days and i thought it would be maybe a 3, 3.5 or 3.75 rating, and then i picked it up again to finish it only to realize that the "disturbing" things these kids did before where not the end, and that they would do something even worse, so at the end i decided to go with 4/5.

 “Everything begins only to end. The moment you were born you began to die. That's how it is with everything.”

 This book is about meaning and if there are things that are important and their meaning, and about pierre (who claimed nothing matters, so nothing is worth doing) and the things his classmates do to prove him wrong (but as the story advances you get to see that they are actually proving that life has meaning only to themselves). If you think about the things and their meaning you'll probably get to the conclusion that the meaning that we attribute to something is subjective for nothing will mean the same to all people, even life. All of the reviews i have read only focus on that, and with reason (that is the premise, duh), but there are many other things that this book deals with. Like how humans could get so low only to prove that they are right and don't give up their ideals. But i think that the most important lesson this book gives is to know whent to say "stop" and that it is enough, beacuse agnes and her classmates never did that it turned out with really awful concequences to some kids
just beacause they didn't stop it even if they could without any difficulty, and the guy that told the adults what was happening did it when there was no turning back. To know when to stop something that is affecting you is self respect and it is really important. Beacuase of this my rating is of 4 stars.


 These kids got so immerse on clinging to the fact that life actually has meaning that they even lost the ability to distinguish between good and evil that they went to the extent of doing something ,that i won't write to not spoil it, and blame another person for all the things they did, and continue living their lives as if nothing ever happened.