Marbury Lens by Andrew Smith

I didn't finish this book. I did not like it. Smith wrote Ghost Medicine which I liked very much. I wrote about it in this blog. Marbury Lens starts out with a brutal kidnapping and plausible escape and death of the kidnapper. Jack repeats many times that all that happens to him after is because the kidnapper messed up his brain. He repeats he should get help. But, he just keeps saying this and just keeps doing not very smart things. He is on vacation in London when a stranger begins talking with him as if they've known each other for some time. Then leaves a weird pair of lenses behind and vanishes. Jack tries them on and is transported to a different time and place. It is a inhospitable world with famine, lack of water, violence. Sometimes he is away from our world for only a minute, sometimes a whole day passes. He could dump the lenses after his first terrifying experience. He does not. He keeps using them, keeps saying the kidnapper messed up his brain. He begins to keep himself oriented in time by putting sticky notes all over his mirror and keeps right on going. And, I stopped reading. It was too repetitive, and did not make good sense to me. Maybe someone out there can explain the compulsion to subject himself to the terrifying experiences behind the Marbury Lens, not me.
JDW 12/27/10