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Gutless, by Carl Deuker
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From the author of Gym Candy comes a novel of football and bullying, finding friends and finding courage.
With both good speed and good hands, wide receiver Brock Ripley should be a natural for the varsity team, but he shies away from physical contact. When he gets cut from varsity, he also loses his friendship with star quarterback Hunter Gates who begins lashing out at not only Brock, but also Brock’s friend, the quiet and smart Richie Fang. Brock wants to stand up for Fang, but he is younger, smaller, and doesn’t want to cause problems. But when the bullying goes too far, will Brock be able to face his fears, stop being a bystander, and prove to himself that he is brave enough?
- Sales Rank: #10685 in Books
- Published on: 2016-09-06
- Released on: 2016-09-06
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.25" h x 1.16" w x 5.50" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 336 pages
Review
"Fans who count on Deuker to put a provocative spin on an already satisfying story won’t be disappointed."
—Bulletin
"A well-written offering that deals with coming-of-age, bullying, and exciting sports action; a touchdown for sports collections and reluctant readers."
—School Library Journal
"The sports may hook readers, but the bullying will land them."
—Kirkus
About the Author
Carl Deuker participated in several sports as a boy. He was good enough to make most teams, but not quite good enough to play much. He describes himself as a classic second-stringer. "I was too slow and too short for basketball; I was too small for football, a little too chicken to hang in there against the best fastballs. So, by my senior year the only sport I was still playing was golf." Carl still loves playing golf early on Sunday mornings at Jefferson Park in Seattle, the course on which Fred Couples learned to play. His handicap at present is 13. Combining his enthusiasm for both writing and athletics, Carl has created many exciting, award-winning novels for young adults. He currently lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and daughter.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Chapter 1
I don’t know what it is, but I do know that Hunter Gates had it. Not just because he was bigger and stronger than everybody else. He had it in the way he cocked his head, the way he looked at you, the way he didn’t look at you. He let you know that he came first and everyone else followed and that was how it was meant to be. It’s why I never liked him, not in middle school, not in high school. And it’s also why—until he went full throttle after Richie Fang—I wanted to be his friend.
It was a hot June day when Hunter Gates showed up. I was hanging out with Trevor Marino, Austin Pauley, and the McDermott twins—Rory and Tim. Eighth grade was over; Whitman Middle School was over. You’re in between things when you’re that age: you can’t wait to grow up, but you’re scared of it too.
We’d met at the skateboard park by the library at noon and then drifted down to Gilman Park. We had no plans, so we killed time in the shady area between the wading pool and the basketball court, where a half-dozen shirtless high school guys were playing a full-court game.
Every once in a while, one of us would disrespect another guy—say something about his sister’s body or his own zits. It was a joke, but there was always the taste of truth to it, so whoever got dissed would chase his tormentor around, pretending to be mad enough to fight. Sometimes the chase would go through the wading pool, which ticked off the mothers hovering over their toddlers. They glared at us, and finally Mrs. Rojas—the woman who’d supervised the wading pool for a million years—told us to leave.
We argued that we hadn’t done anything wrong and that America was a free country, but she threw up her thumb like an umpire making a call at home plate. “Out of here. You’re too old to be hanging around a wading pool.”
Rory McDermott had brought along his soccer ball—we’d all played on the Whitman Wildcats, our middle school’s soccer team—so we wandered over to the soccer field and started kicking it back and forth.
Hunter Gates was two years older than us, so he was heading into his junior year. He was bigger, stronger, tougher, and meaner than anybody else.
Every time I saw Hunter, I remembered Jerry Jerzek. There was nothing special about Jerry. He wasn’t smart or funny or athletic. He was just a good guy.
I don’t know what Jerry did to Hunter—or if he even did anything. But in seventh grade, right after Halloween, Hunter got on him, and that meant that Hunter’s friends got on him too. They said that his ears were too big, that he crapped logs that clogged the school toilets, that his mother’d had sex with an iguana. And then they started calling him Jerry Jumper.
Nobody knew what the joke was. But every time Hunter or one of his buddies—and he had about a dozen in his posse—spotted Jerry, they’d scream, “Jump, Jerry, jump!”
Jerry tried to ignore them, but then they’d come at him and play-slap him on the side of his face until he finally jumped as if he were on an invisible pogo stick. Once Jerry was red in the face and sweating, Hunter would tell him he could stop. “We’re just kidding you, Jerry. No hard feelings.”
After Hunter and those guys got on him, nobody wanted to be seen with Jerry. It was as if he had diarrhea or something worse. I once saw him throwing up in the bushes before school. Not long after that, he started skipping school, and in February he transferred to McClure on Queen Anne Hill.
In my fourth grade science class, my teacher once emptied a bottle of iron filings onto a piece of paper and drew a magnet back and forth above them. The filings danced around the paper, drawn to that magnet wherever it went. That’s how it was with Hunter Gates. He drew people to him, even if what he was doing made your insides churn.
The reason was simple. Name a sport where a ball bounced, and Hunter was great at it. Not good—great. Football was his best sport. His father started grooming him to be an NFL quarterback from the day he was born. Hunter’s Crown Hill junior football team won the league title every year, and then he was great again in middle school. As a high school freshman, he took Crown Hill High from city laughingstock to the brink of the playoffs. Everybody figured he’d just go on being great, but his sophomore year was mediocre. Not bad, but not good—he was just another quarterback. It was the first time he’d been ordinary.
That June day, while I kicked the ball around with the McDermott twins and the other guys, Hunter and his father unpacked their gear and started throwing a football back and forth. His father was a big-shot attorney for an oil company that did fracking in North Dakota, but he didn’t ignore Hunter. At every game and most practices, he was on the sidelines—one of those parent volunteers who do nothing but work with their own son.
Whenever I’d seen Hunter’s father at a game or practice, he had his arms crossed in front of his chest, a baseball cap pulled down over his eyes, and a grim look on his face. He didn’t scream, but he never smiled, either. Tough love is what my dad called it. “His kid has a ton of talent, so he doesn’t want him to waste it. Hard to blame him for that.”
All of Hunter’s passes that late June day were bullets, straight as a string. But no matter how well he threw, his father saw something wrong. His arm wasn’t high enough; he was stepping too far forward; his footwork was slow.
I didn’t want a father like that, but I did wish my father could go to the park with me, kick a soccer ball around, and just be a dad.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
No guts, no glory?
By E.M. Bristol
Brock Ripley doesn't want to be like Hunter Gates, a fellow teammate and star on their football team, but he has to admit the guy's got "it," the charisma that automatically draws people to him. But Hunter's dad does give Brock the opportunity to practice football, something his own dad, who has recently become disabled, cannot do. But Brock still recognizes the bully in Hunter, especially after Hunter and his friends begin to pick on Brock's friend, Richie Fang, the new kid at school, whose mom is terminally ill. Richie is funny, excels at multiple interests and is not afraid to push back if he feels it's the right thing to do. When Richie joins the football team and displays a gift, Brock hopes that this will smooth things over with Hunger and his group, but when it begins to look like things are getting worse, Brock must decide whether or not to take a stand.
Thoughts: It was interesting to see how high school coaches and sports program are handling the issue of concussions (as well as parents), now that information linking them to an array of serious health issues has been made public. The characters in "Gutless" are all aware of the recent controversy and must keep that in mind as they choose to play a sport now considered more long-term dangerous than in the past.
The author (as I am not) is clearly an expert on high school level sports like football and soccer and writes about them with authority. As I am not an expert, I can't speak to the accuracy, but all the jargon sounds legitimate to me.
The chapters are quite short - no more than a couple of pages, which makes for a choppy read that I found difficult to adjust to and be absorbed in for awhile at the beginning. It also took quite awhile before I figured out where the story was going.
Overall, it was easy to sympathize with Brock's dilemma, as most of us have had at least one time when we should have spoken up and didn't. I wish there had been less sports jargon and more development of some of the secondary characters, but I enjoyed it.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
I can truthfully say that even the most unathletic of readers will enjoy GUTLESS.
By Teen Reads
Brock Ripley was painfully aware of many things.
One: His father would never be the same and watching his parents try to be enthusiastic about things only made it worse.
Two: Hunter Gates was the notorious bully that crushed anybody who so much as looked at him the wrong way. Despite this, Brock desperately wanted to prove himself to him, especially since it was because of Hunter that Brock discovered his love for football, and that only made things worse.
Three: He didn't want to befriend Richie Fang. Brock had only asked if the seat was open, not if Richie wanted a best friend. The fact that Brock actually ended up liking the guy only complicated matters, which of course, continued making things worse.
Four: Brock couldn't seem to stand and fight, not even when his career in sports and his friendships depended on it. This was the worst of all. He was a coward, had a big, fat, yellow streak running down his back and everybody knew it.
Carl Deuker goes from family to friendship to sports and back in a mostly relatable story told from the point of view of Brock Ripley. I'm not sure how many people are naturally varsity football material like Brock, but I know that GUTLESS strays from the field enough to leave room for other relatable topics. Like Brock, everybody has problems and fears even if they always have a smile on their face. This was probably the main idea of the book (I swear I haven't spoiled anything) and Carl Deuker definitely did a great job at portraying it. The build-up of the story left me wondering when my prediction would occur.
As somebody who is far from interested in sports I can truthfully say that even the most unathletic of readers will enjoy GUTLESS. For the first time ever, I found myself enjoying a sport. There were times when I was really lost but even so, the football "plays” did not overshadow enough of a scenario to leave me completely at a loss.
The characters in GUTLESS were admittedly stereotypical. Richie is the overachieving foreigner. Hunter is the handsome jock that enjoys harassing those below him on the social pyramid. Brock is your average Joe that just so happens to have a paralyzing fear and a natural talent for football. Despite the small dissatisfaction of the lack of development from some characters, the climax was anticipated. I wondered chapter after chapter about when my prediction would come true. Every time something seemed to be over, it wasn’t. The ending was surprisingly (and unusually) satisfying, though.
Even though GUTLESS was incredibly different from a book called FALL FROM GRACE by Charles Benoit, I found similarities in the main characters. So if you've read Benoit's book, make sure to check out GUTLESS.
On that note, if you like books about sports and facing fears, GUTLESS would be a great next read! Especially if you are a reader that has no qualms about facing facts and enjoys insight on topics, such as bullying, that are widely ignored at schools.
Reviewed by Flor H., Teen Board Member
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Fine sports fiction.
By J.Prather
I'm a big fan of Carl Deuker's sports fiction and feel that he has a unique voice and an uncanny ability to combine the excitement and suspense inherent in sports with some truly piercing real life situations. Gutless is a fast paced, searing look at bullying and will hook readers from the start with a cast of complex characters and some of Dueker's finest sports writing.
Brock is a young athlete dealing with an ailing father and searching for his place in a new high school, a new team and new friends. He worries about his own courage when he hesitates on the playing field and in the high school hallways. He's a boy afraid of contact and confrontation trying to succeed in a world where both are required. His relationship with his nerdy friend Richie is the highlight of the novel, and their dialogues are authentic and keep the pages turning. Brock foreshadows the ending pretty early on, so the reader knows something bad is going to happen, just not what it is. This creates so much suspense that it makes it hard to put this book down.
Soccer fans and football fans will find plenty to admire here. I love a good football story and nobody writes football quite like Carl Deuker. Reluctant readers will appreciate the fast pace and the short chapters. All sports fans will recognize the genuine emotions brought about by victory and painful loss. Teens dealing with their own drive to succeed and searching for their own path will also find much to relate to in Brock's struggles to prove that he's not gutless. It's a story of triumph over fear and learning how to do the right thing even when it doesn't seem to be the right thing at all.
Most of Deuker's books are laser focused, but this one wanders around a bit too much for my taste. The author took a few too many narrative side trips, especially in developing the Hunter character. So despite losing a star due to lack of focus, there's no denying this is a great read and an enthusiastic recommend.
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