Skud

by Dennis Foon

Book Overview

Four guys -- Tommy, Brad, Andy and Shane - are all making their way in the jungle that is the last year of high school. Tommy, model student, is heading for the military to learn to fly fighter jets. His best friend, Brad, is being scouted for Junior A, which will finally satisfy his ambitious hockey dad. Andy is on the verge of making his acting breakthrough. He's got an agent, and he's got an audition for the role that could launch his career --...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0888995490
• ISBN13: 9780888995490
• Release Date: March 2004
• Publisher: Groundwood Books
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.28 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 4.4" x 7.1"
• Age Range: 13 years and up
• Grade Range: Preschool to Grade 8

Customer Reviews

Powerful

Skud is told through the eyes of 4 teens living in a mixed up world filled with violence, rage and sorrow. Brad is a hotshot hockey player egged on by his demanding father and taught to get his way by any means (like bodychecking) since he was four years old. Andy is an aspiring actor with dreams of making it big, directing his own movies and living the good life. But when he meets Shane, the toughest guy in the high school, who sells drugs and has killed before, everything changes. Andy sees the softer side of Shane, the one mourning his younger brother, who was killed with a breadknife. Tommy is the school's golden boy. On the honour roll, soccer team; a cadet who wants to fly F-16s and is going places. But when his girlfriend Sheila breaks up with him, things slowly start unravelling and through the perspectives of these 4 guys, the story of pain unfolds. It's absolutely brilliant.

Richie's Picks: SKUD

"...they killed 40 or 50 of them..."--US Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld "Violence, violenceIt's the only thing that'll make you see sense"--Mott the Hoople Meet the four high school seniors from Vancouver who narrate SKUD: Brad:"We used to practice behind the garage. Me in shorts and T-shirt, with only my [hockey] stick for protection. He had a bucket of stones. He throws, I have to deflect them. I smack the rock or the rock smacks me. He throws hard. If I whimper, he throws harder."Once I took my stick and I knocked down a bee's hive. Just to see if I could. Whether I could take it or not. I got thirty-two stings. It was nothing compared to those stones. My dad trained me well." Tommy:"Next year I move to the island to train as a fighter pilot. I'll be flying F-16s. See the world. At twice the speed of sound. Once you're strapped in, you're the jet, the jet is you. Not virtual reality. Reality reality. It's you. You plug into it. Become One. The oxygen, the communications. Computer at your fingertips. Only now, you're not this skin and bone, this weakness, this nothing. Now your skin is titanium. Your ears are enhanced radar. Your eyes are infrared thermal sights. You move stratospheric. You have smart bombs, glide bombs, Maverick missile-seeker heads. Boom. You hit the speed of sound once. Boom. You hit it twice. And you keep going. You're passing one thousand two hundred klicks an hour, one thousand three hundred, four hundred, five hundred. And nothing stops you, nothing touches you. You are untouchable." Shane:"Once upon a time I had a good backup. I had the best backup in the world."He'd take it for me, or me for him, whatever kept us alive. Since we were three, four, five."Mama always had a new guy who'd come home tanked, bust us up. Once, I was twelve, New Guy was slamming my face in the wall, painting the plaster red. My backup picks up Mama's hot iron and presses his butt. It worked. New Guy let me go."No matter who New Guy was we'd stand up together. Pay the price together. Be the eyes in back of each other's heads."We had to. We were brothers." Andy:"...I've sworn never to fight unless it's been rehearsed by a certified fight choreographer, and I doubt that Tommy's here for rehearsal."He moves closer." 'She said you had no interest in her,' I tell him. 'It was over.'"I immediately wish I could vacuum the words as they spill from my lips. His eyelids go drowsy, hang there like the practice gliders he flies in the sky."Then he says, 'You want interest? Here.'"I don't see it coming. One fist to the gut and I'm down. At least he didn't hit my face."Inspired by the characters in his play, War, award-winning playwright Dennis Foon has written a gritty tale of four young men, each of whom is coming to terms with his future while dealing with his past. SKUD is the story of the reactions that result when these four individuals smash into each other like highly charged particles in an accelerator. Brad:"You have to draw the line in the s