Neal Shusterman's Blog - Posts Tagged "challenger-deep"

Today’s the day! Challenger Deep is here!

I can’t wait to hear what you think of Challenger Deep. This book comes from a very personal place for me. It’s inspired by my son Brendan’s experiences with schizophrenia, and his artwork—which is interspersed throughout the text—really brings the novel to another level. If you or a loved one has ever struggled with mental illness, I hope you’ll find something familiar and perhaps even comforting in Challenger Deep.

Here’s what The Horn Book wrote in its review:

This novel is a challenge to the reader from its first lines: author Shusterman takes us into the seemingly random, rambling, and surreal fantasies of fifteen-year-old Caden Bosch (yes, it makes sense to associate him with artist Hieronymus) as mental illness increasingly governs his consciousness. Fantasies about a pirate ship ruled by an abrasive one-eyed captain and his parrot, its deck swarming with feral brains (for example) commingle with Caden’s somewhat more comprehensible accounts of family and school, until his parents have him admitted to a psychiatric ward. As he responds to drugs and therapy, Caden’s fantasies become increasingly transparent, showing themselves to be imaginative, ungovernable versions of his hospital psychiatrist, Dr. Poirot, and his fellow patients. The disorientation Shusterman evokes through the first-person narration requires some patience, but it’s an apt, effective way to bring readers into nightmarish anxiety and despair—and out of it. Caden’s narrative is all the more engulfing because of the abundant wit and creativity evident in the eccentric specifics of his perceptions. Clearly written with love, the novel is moving; but it’s also funny, with dry, insightful humor. Illustrations by the author’s son Brendan, drawn during his own time in the depths of mental illness, haunt the story with scrambling, rambling lines, tremulousness, and intensity.

If you’ve had a chance to read Challenger Deep already, please comment on this post and share your thoughts! I would love you hear what you think.

By the way, I’ll be celebrating the release tonight at the Barnes & Noble in Tigard, Oregon, right outside of Portland. There will be a reading, Q&A, and signing. Get the details here. Hope to see you there!

Click here to learn more about Challenger Deep

Yo New York! Join me for the NYC launch of Challenger Deep. I’ll doing a reading, signing, and Q&A tonight (4/24) at the incomparable Books of Wonder in Manhattan. This is a big one, so come early. You can find details and directions to the store here.

Looking forward to seeing you out there!

-Neal

It’s been a long time in the works—my official Storenvy store is now open for business!

The new store features my son Brendan’s artwork from Challenger Deep, available in 8×10 and 5×7 full-color, autographed prints. Fifty percent of the proceeds from all sales will be donated to NAMI—the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

By the way, if you didn’t hear, Challenger Deep is a National Book Award finalist! I’m thrilled by all the attention the book has received, and encouraged by the way readers have used it to start a conversation about mental health. From the bottoms of our hearts, Brendan and I would like thank everyone who has read it and shared their thoughts with us. Thank you for telling your stories as well.

***Attention international shoppers: please note that unfortunately we cannot fulfill international orders at this time. If you place an order from outside the U.S., I have to refund your payment immediately. Sorry for the inconvenience!***

Click here to check out the store.

We won!!!

Wow. What a night.

Thank you, thank you, thank you everyone who has sent me kind emails, texts, tweets, psychic messages, and so on. I want to congratulate the other 2015 National Book Award winners—Adam Johnson, Ta-Nehisi Coates, and Robin Coste Lewis—and give a shoutout to my fellow shortlist nominees in the Young People’s Literature category: Steve Sheinkin, Ali Benjamin, Noelle Stevenson, and Laura Ruby! If you haven’t read Bone Gap, Nimona, Most Dangerous: Daniel Ellsberg and the Secret History of the Vietnam War, and The Thing About Jellyfish, make those the four next books on your list!

If you missed my acceptance speech from last night, watch it here.

And finally, if you want to do more to support ‪Challenger Deep‬ and mental health awareness, visit my shop and order one of Brendan’s incredible prints.