Louis Sachar is a renowned novelist. Among his many masterpieces, the most famous is a novella called "Holes".
Holes "tells the story of young Stanley Yelnats who was wrongly accused of stealing a pair of expensive sneakers and sent to the Green Lake camp. The entire book is interspersed with many timelines, explaining the gratitude, grudges, and grievances of several families over the past 100 years. The story is intricately crafted, and the suspense is set to perfection, providing unexpected and reasonable explanations for all the groundwork.
When Stanley arrived at the Green Lake Camp, he met a group of instructors and camp members. The instructors here have no good history and all have criminal records; And the campers were all sent here for various crimes, regardless of their motives. Their daily job here is to dig holes in a large dry riverbed. Each hole must reach a certain size, and excavation on hard soil is even more difficult. The campers were taught from the beginning to hand over the valuable things dug up to the camp owner - "The Warden". And Stanley also made friends during the day after day of arduous digging work: a young man nicknamed "Zero". He is the fastest digger, but he has not received basic education; Stanley, on his behalf, teaches him to read every night.
However, everything changed in a moment. Stanley dug up a strange metal tube, but had to hand it over to the child king "X-Ray", and The Warden was very interested in it. Stanley realized that the entire matter could involve an unknown secret. Subsequently, Zero attacked a counselor and had to flee away from the camp to a desert without water. Stanley chose to follow him. The two found a magical place without a source of water: "The thumb of the god". The two barely managed to support themselves to the foot of the mountain, when Zero ran out of strength and fell to the ground; Stanley, on the other hand, chose to carry him on his shoulders and continue climbing the mountain peak. He crawled and sang the ancient songs of his family; But he never imagined that this action would fulfill the contract that his great great grandfather was a hundred years late.
Finally, the two of them returned to the vicinity of the camp, hoping to excavate the treasure Stanley had previously discovered; But it was discovered that it was being used by The Warden and almost took away the treasure. But Stanley's lawyer arrived and saved his safety. Finally, Stanley and Zero returned to their homes in the lawyer's car. And as the box opened, everything came to light:
Stanley's great grandfather borrowed a pig from the one-legged Egyptian woman Zeroni for love to please his lover, but he vowed to lift her up to the mountaintop and sing a song she taught him. When his lover finally abandoned him, he felt lost and sailed alone to the United States, completely forgetting the oath he had made to Zeroni. And when Stanley climbed the mountaintop with Zero in his arms and started singing, and when Stanley's great great grandfather's great grandson sang to Zeroni's great great grandson, a contract that had passed for a hundred years was finally fulfilled, and the bad luck of the Stanley family's ancestors was finally eliminated.
As for that treasure, it was left by a young female teacher whose lover died due to racial discrimination. The female teacher was excessively heartbroken and became a famous extralegal robber; Stanley's great grandfather was once ransacked by her near the Green Lake camp. Later, the enemies of the two female robbers approached her and forced her to surrender the treasure hidden in the Green Lake camp; And the female robber vowed to die and committed suicide there. From then on, the two of them began to dig holes in the Green Lake Camp, digging for generations and eventually becoming the Green Lake Camp; And the treasure Stanley received was the treasure that his great grandfather had been robbed of, with his name on it. Stanley ultimately lived a happy life with Zero due to the wealth inside.
The book is cleverly conceived and full of ideas, involving elements such as racial discrimination and bandit treasures. It is thrilling to read, and the suspense is also breathtaking. The final HP moved an old reader of mine even more: finally, there is a great work.
