I Am The Cheese: YA Novel of Suspense, Paranoia, and Faulty Memory

♦ December 7, 2014 ♦ Leave a comment

I-am-cheese-cover

Cormier, Robert. I Am The Cheese. 233 p.. New York: Laurel-Leaf Books. 1977.

Booksellers and reviewers find it hard to settle on a genre that best suits I Am The Cheese. It is most often referred to as being adventure, mystery, or suspense. I would label the novel a psychological thriller. I Am The Cheese is a thrill ride for the mind. But I am getting ahead of myself.

Readers first meet Adam Farmer, a young teen bicycling alone to meet his father in Vermont. This seems like a brave course, especially since Adam as narrator reveals his many paralyzing fears and anxieties. Something about the boy feels haunted – or hunted – the reader must determine if either is the case. Adam’s narration of his journey is interrupted by chapters that appear to be transcripts of interviews of Adam conducted by Brint, who is possibly a therapist, in some sort of mental health facility. During these interactions, Adam presents with confusion and forgetfulness. The bits of memory that surface form a horrific story of the Delmonte family, forced into a witness protection program, and new names and identities. The Delmontes become the Farmers, and pawns of a shadowy government agency. Without explanation, the family is eventually marked for death in an auto “accident.” Adam is the lone survivor. He is being held and medicated somewhere, and interrogated about his memories and identity. At the story’s end, the reader discovers that Adam is only riding his bike on a small circuit around the grounds of a psychiatric hospital, and not across country roads and state lines. One isn’t sure whether to feel a sense of shock, betrayal, or something else.

This is about a complex as a plot can get. Readers are with Adam on his bike ride, then with him in the mental ward, enduring headaches and flashbacks of his life as Paul Delmonte and as Adam Farmer. We are simultaneously taking two trips – one physical, the other psychological – with a kid who can’t seem to keep anything straight. For some students, this may be their first book with an unreliable narrator. It can be unsettling. Without doubt, Cormier wants to create a confusing, anxious experience for the reader. He is relating a small taste of what Adam is going through.

Scholastic provides a Lexile measure of 810 L, and a reading level equivalent of grade 5.6. This text would flummox most fifth graders that try to follow it. It has an interest level of grades 9-12, which seems appropriate. Readers of that maturity will be better prepared to wrestle with themes of right to privacy, self-identity, self-determination, government controls, psychological manipulation, and mental illness. The story provides rich opportunities to discuss point of view, make inferences, and study cause and effect.

Awards for I am the Cheese: 1997 Phoenix Award

Related Books by Robert Cormier: The Chocolate War, We All Fall Down, After the First Death, In the Middle of the Night

Links to Supporting Digital Content:

Discussion with Robert Cormier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xKkZkCUWJg

“I am the Cheese”: A Nightmarish Nail-biter (listen to the story): http://www.npr.org/2012/05/29/150960715/i-am-the-cheese-a-nightmarish-nail-biter

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