Tattoo Atlas--"Nice is different than good" OR "All of us have some crazy in us, don't we?"

Title: Tattoo Atlas

Author:  Tim Floreen


What it’s about (in 75 words or fewer): Last year, Franklin brought a gun to school and killed Rem's friend, Pete. Now Franklin is the subject of an experiment (run by Rem's mother) to see out if sociopaths can be "cured" by implanting a device that activates the "empathy" parts of their brains. The procedure seems to work on Franklin, and he and Rem almost become (more than) friends, but when another classmate is killed, Rem wonders if Franklin is fooling everyone.


What I think: Tattoo Atlas is a frustrating, suspenseful, horrifying, and thought-provoking book that I could not put down, even when one of my kids asked me why I was "looking at the book with such a scared face."  I tried to take breaks and go back to reading the other books I am in the middle of, but I couldn't. I had to know what was going to happen to Rem, Franklin, and their other classmates, but at the same time was scared to find out what was going to happen.

"The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame" (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray).  

The last time I reviewed a Tim Floreen book, Willful Machines, I compared it to several episodes of The Twilight Zone.  In Tattoo Atlas, Rem collects books that have 1960s-style psychedelic covers, and "coincidentally" (and by "coincidentally" I mean "deliberate choice by Floreen" 😉), the novels Rem mentions in his collection are connected to the story. 

So, I Googled old 1960s cover art for The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Frankenstein, and The Picture of Dorian Gray, which led me to this absolute gem of a LiveJournal with this quote in his summary of Dorian Gray, which I will be laughing about forever:

"Sibyl's brother is at first like, "How can you be the guy who seduced and abandoned my sister 18 years ago? You're so luminous!" and Dorian tosses his hair glamorously and walks out. Another person at the opium den is like, "No, that is definitely the guy, he's just aging really well. He's the Rob Lowe of Victorian England" (BizarreVictoria)

Seriously.  Visit the whole blog, and check out each link for the cover art.  Some of it is just laughably terrible!

"I shuddered to think that future ages might curse me as their pest, who selfishness had not hesitated to buy its own peace at the price, perhaps, of the existence of the whole human race" (Mary Shelley's Frankenstein).

In Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus, Dr. Frankenstein brings a monster of stitched-together-corpse-body-parts to life, is not sure what to do with his creation, so he rejects the monster, which causes violence and havoc for everyone.  "But I didn't mean to make a monster!" Dr. Frankenstein whines.  "My creature got away from me.  Plus:  it's all for science!!"

"One man's life or death were but a small price to pay for the acquirement of the knowledge which I sought, for the dominion I should acquire and transmit over the elemental foes of our race" (Frankenstein).

Frankenstein clearly teaches the moral of "don't play God," and this is not something human scientists can quite do . . .yet.   This piece by John Oliver about gene editing (you should watch it now if you are not offended by cuss words!), asks some ethical questions that are created by a story like Frankenstein, such as, "who should be the one who defines a fixable medical, physical, or character 'defect,' and where do we draw the line when 'fixing' conditions?"

Should a defect of "evil" be fixed? Franklin is undeniably a sociopath:  if the fact that he shot a classmate in cold blood in front of a roomful of students is not convincing enough, there is a horrifying incident in the very first chapter that made me shriek out loud (click here for a sort-of spoiler).

In Tattoo Atlas, Rem's scientist mother is the Dr. Frankenstein: she has created a capsule that can modify the empathy sensors in human brains, a device she claims will "solve the problem of evil" if used correctly, similar to how antidepressants increase serotonin levels in a depressed person's brain.

During a discussion in Rem's history class, he describes what he knows about the procedure to his classmates, who bring up some valid concerns, such as "is the lab secure enough to hold a prisoner?" (spoiler alert: NO), "is the reason they are doing this experiment on a kid is because consent was easy to get?" (spoiler alert: YES), and "if Franklin is not in his right mind, how meaningful is his consent to surgery?" (spoiler alert: dubious).

Nel, Franklin's best friend, has some additional ethical questions:

"What does that even mean?  'In his right mind.'  It's the mind he was born with, isn't it? . . . What gives us the right to change who he is just because he doesn't fit in?  Locking him up because he broke the law, fine, that's one thing, but this is something else.  And where do we draw the line?  All of us have some crazy in us, don't we?" (Tim Floreen's Tattoo Atlas, pg. 78).

This is the same argument with gene therapy.  Where do we draw the line?  And what if we go too far?  Is it worth playing with human lives (even if the humans in question are not so innocent)?

Let's talk about Rem's mom.  She has a lot of power, and the more we learn about her, the more we find out how much she actually has.  And yet, she is not a complete villain; her motives for the experiment and desire for the power over Franklin's are understandable. I feel sorry for her--but she is the one responsible for a lot of terrible events, like Dr. Frankenstein.

"I am malicious because I am miserable.  Am I not shunned and hated by all mankind?" (Frankenstein).

One of the aspects of Tattoo Atlas I thought was so interesting was the blurring of the lines between good and evil and subsequently, heroes and villains. Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde explores this theme rather blatantly.  Dr. Jekyll's potion turns him into the evil, conscience-less Mr. Hyde, but even that book makes it clear that Mr. Hyde is not a completely different person:  he is a part of Dr. Jekyll's repressed personality.  Mr. Hyde would not be possible without Dr. Jekyll.

After the first chapter of Tattoo Atlas, the lines seem clearly drawn:  Franklin is an evil sociopath, the scientists are the good heroes, Rem and his friends are the innocent victims.

But that was chapter one.

"At that time my virtue slumbered; my evil, kept awake by ambition, was alert and swift to seize the occasion; and the thing that was projected was Edward Hyde" (Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

After that, the lines get a bit blurry.  Franklin, although a murder, is getting brain surgery with dubious consent.  Rem's friends, Tor, Callie, and Lydia, are not perfect.  Tor is a flat-out bully, and he and Rem are betraying Lydia in the worst possible way.  Callie was my favorite of the group of friends, but I would hardly call her an innocent victim.

All of them make fun of Lydia because she doesn't cuss, and none of them let Lydia know that Tor is not who he seems.  Some friends.  It is also revealed throughout the story that all of them bullied Franklin and were his intended victims in the shooting.  Yes, Franklin was still the shooter and they were still victims in that respect, but it's a lot more nuanced than I expected.

I'm pretty sure high school me would have judged the heck out of all of them.  Rem's nickname is "Mr. Nice Guy," HA.  I kept singing the line "Nice is different than good" from the song "I Know Things Now" and was thrilled in the book when Rem actually says "Being a nice person isn't the same as being a good person" and I was all "No more Mr. Nice Guy!" and sang the Alice Cooper song until my children yelled at me.

(Also, Rem makes some spectacularly stupid decisions that I will not spoil completely here but GOOD LORD, kid. Show some common sense and self-preservation!)

"Both sides of me were in dead earnest; I was no more myself when I laid aside restraint and plunged in shame, than when I laboured [sic], in the eye of day, at the furtherance of knowledge or the relief of sorrow and suffering" (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde).

But back to Franklin.  He does seem different after the procedure, but he still makes the choice to sneak out of the high-security lab and visit Rem, who is almost attracted to the new Franklin. Rem doesn't trust Franklin completely--but it's important to remember that Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are the same person, and so are killer Franklin and empathetic Franklin.

"Between these two, I now felt I had to choose.  My two natures had memory in common, but all other faculties were most unequally shared between them" (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

Franklin is literally put in a lab and sits sobbing after his surgery; he is so overwhelmed with grief and remorse by what he had done.  Is there such a thing as too much empathy? Is it considered torture to put a teenager through this?  He is still just a kid, after all.  That bothers me.

Would I be bothered by Franklin's distress if Franklin had killed a student in my school or my hometown?  HECK NO.  So I guess I'm not completely good, either.

And then just like Mr. Hyde, Franklin himself can't separate the good parts of his personality from the bad parts (or is he a "victim" of the surgery, like Dr. Jekyll is a victim of the potion that didn't work as he had planned)?

Who really is the victim in this story, and who really is the hero?

"A moment before I had been safe of all men's respect, wealthy, beloved--the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, and thrall to the gallows" (The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde)

Another book Rem talks about is The Picture of Dorian Gray, and if Rem had been all "Oscar Wilde was GAY and it was an OPEN SECRET and look how edgy I am to have this book," I would have rolled my eyes, and this blog post would be mostly complaining how Oscar Wilde references and On the Road references are ridiculously overdone in LGBTQ+ literature.

Dorian Gray is a story in which the title character (who is young, blonde, beautiful, and not-so-smart) has a portrait painted of him painted by the talented artist Basil (who is "sensitive" in a time in which "such proclivities" landed men in jail).  Then we have Lord Henry, the big jerkface aristocrat, who values having fun and physical beauty above all else.

Of course, dumb hottie Dorian listens to Lord Henry and becomes so obsessed with his own beauty that he begins to do horrible things, but instead of Dorian aging and becoming ugly with time, the portrait mysteriously ages instead.

I really enjoy and very much recommend The Picture of Dorian Gray.  It is a relatively easy read (much more so than Frankenstein or Jekyll and Hyde), and my goodness I just love to hate Lord Henry.  Oscar Wilde should be more than just "that one gay writer everyone mentions if they want to sound woke about the LGBTQ community."

"The past could always be annihilated.  Regret, denial, or forgetfulness could do that.  But the future was inevitable.  There were passions in him that would find their terrible outlet, dreams that would make the shadow of their evil real" (Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray).

I was pleasantly surprised that the Dorian Gray reference in the book actually explained the title Tattoo Atlas, and, in my opinion, provided another parallel to the story.  Franklin was a lot like Dorian:  yes, he did evil and stupid things, but he was being controlled (in a way) by the scientists who altered his brain, which were like the evil (yet harmless on the surface) Lord Henry:

"'But surely, if one lives merely for one's self, Harry, one pays a terrible price for doing so?'  suggested the painter.

 'Yes, we are overcharged for everything nowadays.  I should fancy that the real tragedy of the poor is that they can afford nothing but self-denial.  Beautiful sins, like beautiful things, are the privilege of the rich'" (The Picture of Dorian Gray).

Oh, Lord Henry. 😖


The plot of Tattoo Atlas kept me guessing throughout the whole book.  The ending made me sad, but it was inevitable.  No other ending would have worked.


This book is on the 2018 Rainbow Book List.


My final takeaway (in 75 words or fewer):  Read this book and also read The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Tattoo Atlas receives the TIBT award and the MLCF award (page coming soon).

I linked throughout this post to Shmoop and BizarreVictoria.  Both are highly recommended websites.


Memorable quotes/passages from the book:

• "What's your mom's plan, Rem?  Make everyone perfectly empathic and compliant?  Except for the people in charge, because you can bet your a** they won't be doing the surgery on themselves.  And while they're at it, they can fix other people's mental deviances too.  Maybe you should watch your back.  The gays might be next" (pg. 78).
• "What could I possibly say?  Excuse me, just wondering: while you've been busy recovering from your brain surgery, did you happen to get onto a computer, paint a painstakingly detailed picture of my face, and anonymously send it to me?" (pg. 137).
• "I swiped my palm against his cheek, leaving a satisfying streak of bright red ketchup glistening there like a bloody gash.  Then I walked out into the cold night. 'No more Mr. Nice Guy,' I muttered over my shoulder" (pg. 240).
• "Your mom's working for the military, sweetheart" (pg. 293).

Other reviews: Fables Library and Sufficiently Distracted


This book is NOT available in the Greensboro Public Library.  To request that it be added to their collection, fill out this form.