Lit Circles - Acceleration Acceleration – Josh, Jesse, Ghazal, Laily

Plot The introduction of the novel is Duncan in the lost and found thinking about how he could have saved the drowning girl, the beginning also introduces his co-worker, Jacob and his best friends Wayne and Vinny. The conflict is Duncan tracking The Roach the whole book so you could say its person vs person. however, Duncan also has his own battle against his PTSD from the drowning girl that means it could also be person vs. self. The initiating incident is Duncan finding the roaches nasty journal filled with all of his past and potential crimes after that, Duncan spends working towards finding out who wrote the book by using clues about where he lives and where he works. The big climax is Duncan and Wayne breaking into Roach’s house and Roach chasing Duncan to the subway station then Duncan falling into the way of the train and pulling Roach with him after that, Duncan surprisingly survives and the Roach dies. The conclusion is Duncan and Vinny visiting the pool and Duncan getting some closure with the drowning girl by swimming in the pool himself.

Theme In the book acceleration, the big message Duncan got was that sometimes a situation needs to be taken into your own hands even if its out of control. The theme of the book was about taking matters into your own hands and not turning a blind eye because even though he should have given the book to the police, he kept it because he knew the police wouldn’t have taken the book seriously. This theme connects to a lot of other mystery/detective books because in those books a lot of the time it’s someone taking a situation into their own hands even if its dangerous.

Setting This novel is set in modern day Toronto and the subway station and the mood of the story is very suspenseful and you’re never going to know what happens next. The setting plays a big role in the story by how Duncan works down in the subway and a lot of key scenes were set there.

Character Our protagonist, Duncan, in the book Acceleration starts as a normal and social teenager, but later on you find out he saw someone drown and he thinks that he could have saved her. He’s traumatized and needs to get a bit of closure. He feels that he needs to find out who the Roach is because he believe its his chance to save a life which would help him get over the girl. He changes over the book because he started out as a lazy teenager but in the end he was determined to stop the Roach and almost died because of it. The antagonist Roach is a potential serial killer who lost his journal on the subway. His journal includes a lot of information about his potential targets and his previous crimes.

Conclusion My group and I thought that the book was great. Lots of plots and a big climax. Although the book started off slow it got more extreme towards the end, so we expected a lot to happen at the ending of the book. But it didn’t go as we thought. The antagonist died which made the book end quickly. However, the book did catch our attentions and we would recommend reading more of Graham McNamee. One book that sound very interesting is Beyond: A Ghost Story. Its about a girl who seems to always be committing suicide, but she knows herself that its her shadow trying to kill her. The theme of a serial killer, like acceleration.