dannphan

Farmer,Nancy.The House of the Scorpion. California:

Simon & Schuster, 2002. Print.

ISBN: 0689852231

The House of the Scorpion

Written by: Nancy Farmer

Reviewed by: Danny Phan

Recommended Audience: Young Readers/ Teenagers

The House of the Scorpion, written by Nancy Farmer, is a book where we see fear, hatred, friendship, family, and love. This book is enticing and hard to stop reading once you start. For six years, he has lived in a tiny cottage in the poppy fields of Opium with Celia kind and deeply religious servant woman who is charged with his care and safety. It pulls you in because Matt Alacran ( the main character in the novel) is a boy clone, who has been house ridden is whole life, until a group of boys and girls found him in his isolated house in the middle of a field. Once found, Matt saw among the group, a girl that he thought was attractive, Maria Mendoza, who’s father was a senator. Maria and her brothers lure Matt outside of his house and when he got out he fell onto broken glass and was bleeding. The group of boys and girls carried Matt to their home a few miles away, and that is where Matt learned he was an animal, a clone.

After Matt figures out he was treated so poorly, he started to lose faith in his life. He became all sad and desolate, he missed the kids and thought they would all leave him alone. All of the kids avoided Matt except Maria, Maria liked Matt. This is where their relationship starts, and troubles yet to come. El Patron, Matt’s cloner/master presents Matt with a body guard Tam Lin, who becomes Matt’s closest friend and mentor. Tam Lin taught Matt a lot of basic survival skills that would be used for the future. Tam Lin also tells Matt the dread of his existence, to provide El Patron organs when the time was needed.

Figuring this, Matt despises El Patron, but yet could not stop seeing the man. When El Patron was becoming ill, Celia told El Patron that he could not transplant anything from Matt because she has poisoned Matt, and a transplant would only kill him, due to his old age of 146. This causes El Patron to have a celebration down in an underground cavern where all of the families were invited to eat, drink and have fun. At this point, Matt has snuck away from the home and fled, when he came back he was told of how the celebration was a trap where El Patron mass murdered everyone with a bottle of wine so no one could not inherit his fortunes. Celia figures out that Matt, the only sole family to El Patron, essentially El Patron, was the only inheritor and was now the leader of Opium, the new Drug Lord. Matt comes with a resolution and destroys drug trade within Opium and realizes he could not do it by himself, and needed his friends to help him along the way.

Description of the Book: http://www.shmoop.com/house-of-scorpion/

http://www.shmoop.com/house-of-scorpion/plot-analysis.html

Author’s Website: http://www.nancyfarmerwebsite.com/