Review: Acceptance is at the heart of this debut.
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 13, 2013
Scratches on the Surface opens with a bashing not suited for weak stomachs. Eight guys from Derek Lockwood's high school beat him up and leave him stranded in a rural wheat field outside of Salem, Oregon. Taylor Tronson, one of the eight, returns and takes Derek to get medical attention. The emotional beginning sets the tone for the rest of the story.The telling is raw and, much like Derek's character,  it doesn't cower from honesty. There are scenes so harsh that I wish I hadn't needed to read them, but persisted for the sake of story.Acceptance is at the heart of Scratches on the Surface. Acceptance of people as they are without expecting anything more. Derek brazenly forces the theme while Taylor approaches it through love and curiosity. They're opposites in almost all aspects but hold in common the thrashing and their homosexuality. Derek accepts his homosexuality with no qualms and dares anyone to challenge him about it. He has no need for compassion or false pretenses. Love is a concept Derek chooses not to  fathom nor accept from anyone; instead he finds his own skewed sense of love at the tip of a self-mutilating blade or from the knuckle-side of a fist.Taylor in contrast struggles with his sexuality. A painting of Jesus hangs in his family's living room. He's been raised with religious values that contradicts his true person. Taylor searches to understand how he can be a homosexual and a Christian. During a dark night of the soul, Taylor raises the theme of acceptance from the earthly to the heavenly. He asks God "If you hate your own creation, why did you create it?" It's a question that many ask and I love the answer that Taylor finds.Scratches on the Surface reads well and keeps a good pace. The story is slated as young adult, but that's possibly a miss-classification. I'd recommend keeping it out of hands younger than 16 years. Derek is unapologetic about his need for self-mutilation and was the source of a lot of walk as I tried to erase his bloody image from my mind. The story was shortlisted for the Emerging Queensland Author award in 2012 and is Smibert's first novel.