REVIEW: The Chocolate War - Robert Cormier

• Year first released:  1974
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780375829871
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Random House Children's Books
• My rating (out of 5):  4

In his introduction to The Chocolate War, Cormier explains that he was surprised when his agent called the book a "young adult" book. Apparently he hadn't meant for it to be a young adult book - just an "adult," general fiction book.

On the one hand, Chocolate falls pretty squarely into the label of young adult: the setting is a high school, all of the major characters are teenagers, etc. Their situations and struggles are reflective of - and highly realistically portray - high school life. Also, the actions and motivations of the characters are likely to be relatable and empathy-inducing for teenagers.

On the other hand, though I think I would have generally liked Chocolate if I had read it while in high school, I am certain I got much more out of it now, at age 32.

Chocolate has been labeled a "coming-of-age" story - a label that people are tempted to throw on pretty much any young adult novel that doesn't involve vampires or death matches - but this label is certainly false for Chocolate. It is not a book about growing up, finding your place in life outside of high-school for the first time, or anything of the sort. Yes, a couple of the characters experience growing pains once or twice, and the question of forging your own identity pops up here and there throughout (though mostly only for the main character, Jerry). However, to relegate Chocolate to this breed of story is to do it a disservice, and to miss the point of the novel.

Rather, Chocolate is a psychological game that resembles an intricate, dramatic thriller more than the writings of John Green or Rainbow Rowell. More than once, I've seen the book compared to S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders. Through a casual glance, I suppose I can see the connection. Having read both, though, Chocolate is a much more complex, psychological novel which avoids the brutish machismo of Outsiders in favor of a finely-crafted web of manipulation which grows to be downright Machiavellian.

The main antagonist of the book, Archie, goes far beyond a playground bully, landing himself squarely in the presence of Shakespeare's Iago (from Othello). Like Iago, Archie comes across as highly charismatic and honest (except to those who know his real motives). His charm allows him to weave himself into the lives and situations of nearly everyone around him, all of whom ultimately fall prey to his machinations. And, also like Iago is in Othello, Archie is undoubtedly the most fascinating character in Chocolate, and the gravity into which everything else in the story is drawn. He is a puppetmaster, pulling the strings of all the other characters.

Archie's strings are both what made me enjoy the book more than anything else, as well as what makes me think that I got more out of it now than I would have as a young adult. Though the story isn't hard to follow (I wouldn't call the plot simple, just well-explained), I think that it is easier to understand and admire the different situations and ideas now that I'm not so close to the world portrayed in the book. I imagine I would have thought the book was merely "cool" and "clever" at the time; now I am able to catch on to more of the psychological subtleties involved.

To put it more directly, without the charismatic, sinister, awe-inspiring genius of Archie, Chocolate would have been a completely different - and probably a completely worthless - book. I don't compare him to Iago hyperbolically.

Cormier certainly excelled at bringing his characters and their world to life in Chocolate. Each piece of this manipulative puzzle worked excellently. Nothing in the book left me confused, wondering why it happened or what the character's motivations were. This is all largely to Cormier's credit; most young adult authors seem incapable of weaving together such solidarity and meaning.

I have one complaint about the book, though, and it's too big to ignore.

Cormier's writing was mostly solid: his descriptions, characterizations, use of setting and metaphor and word choice were all highly effective. There is a consistent tone throughout Chocolate that most writers should be jealous of.

Cormier's use of point of view, though, could serve as an example for new writers of exactly what not to do in their own writings.

My personal preference is that a book - even one written from the third-person perspective, such as Chocolate - only follow the point of view of one character throughout the book's entirety. I say this, though, freely acknowledging how subjective it is. There's nothing, per se, inherently wrong with switching between characters. Many authors do it, and there's not necessarily any very concrete reason this should be disallowed.

Indeed, for the first 13 chapters of Chocolate (just under half the book), the POV changes at chapter breaks. The shift is always easy enough to follow. But then inexplicably, beginning with chapter 14, the POV begins switching much more erratically throughout, even multiple times mid-chapter. Though I still didn't have any trouble understanding where the story was or whose mind we were following, this constant shift was distracting and, I fear, a bit lazy on Cormier's part. Was there no other way to relate these occurrences through the eyes of the character whose mind we were following on the previous page? - I'm sure there was, if Cormier had thought through it a bit more. Granted, obviously these shifts were intentional - but intentional or not, they rubbed me the wrong way.

Worse, along these lines, there's also one - but thankfully only one - instance in which Cormier switches POV mid-paragraph for one little sentence. This, clearly, was not intentional, but rather a mistake on Cormier's part (which somehow also passed untouched through his editor's desk).

(I'm referring to a scene in the final quarter or so of the book. I no longer recall the page number, but it's in a dialogue between Jerry and one of his friends, The Goober. The scene follows Jerry's perspective, but then for one little, insignificant sentence, suddenly we're in The Goober's head, before immediately switching back to Jerry's in the very next sentence. Oops.)

As much as I enjoyed Chocolate - particularly the machinations of Archie, which were sheer, twisted delights - this large mishandling of point of view will keep me wary of reading Cormier's other books. No doubt someone who is less picky about this sort of thing won't be as bothered as I was, though. And, even still, it was worth trudging through the erratic POV for this fantastic story, in order to read what is, deservedly, a pillar of young adult fiction.