Book #3:

The Wave
Author: Todd Strasser (writing as Morton Rhue)

Man, oh man. I grabbed this out to read because, at work, I received a preview screener for a brand new film version of the story, only this time set in Germany. To see the originally American story (it's based on an incident at a Palo Alto school) that centres heavily on Nazi conditioning during World War II suddenly set in actual Germany -- well, that I had to see, and fast.

But I needed a new familiarity with the story. While the book is very much a work of young adult fiction, it's still quite heavy, and still full of adult themes and ideas. A rebellious teacher of the John Keating variety, Ben Ross, decides to try out an experiment with his class. The kids don't think a Holocaust-type event could ever occur in contemporary society because Hitler's brand of conditioning would never fly with a modern army. Ross subtley begin to run his class as if training soldiers and before he knows it, and before the kids know it, they're standing to attention when he says so, reading their homework every night in order to answer questions rapid-fire when called upon, and even saluting their fair teacher in the hallways. It's all part of the "Wave".

The experiment works a little too well, and problems begin to arise when the entire school becomes "Wave" mad. The kids want in, and those that don't find themselves in creepy trouble. Clearly, setting the same story in Germany is going to bring new and different, and difficult, themes to the fore. I am halfway through the movie at the moment, and already it's more complex than it's YA starting point.

It's rather a tame book for the big themes it investigates. I thought the climax was a bit watery, and would have enjoyed Rhue taking the kids and their madness to the sorts of places Robert Cormier was never afraid to go. The end of The Chocolate War, for instance, is a hard read. This book isn't so much. You know Ross will win out, and that's fine, but how he gets there isn't nearly as confronting as it could be. But then it is based on fact, so if the depiction of the final moments of the "Wave" is as it happened, then I shouldn't really complain.

Still, it's a creepy book. And creepier still that it actually happened. You can read more about the real-life "wave" in this interview at Ron Jones' website, or at the Guardian.