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Twelve
Nick McDonell.
Grove Press: 2002
(hardcover). ISBN: 0802117171.
244 pages.
Guide not available
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Oh, The Horror. The Horror. We may as well just warn you up front. After an hour or so with this first novel you may just be tempted to give up on the whole thing. Yes, it's true! You have wasted your entire life! Flip to the back flap of this precise, prematurely wise, and chilling novel to look at the author's jacket photo. Now read the bio underneath--one simple sentence--"Nick McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City." Yes, folks, that's right, this guy is seventeen years old, and he can already tell a story that is vastly more compelling than about ninety percent of what's out there on the shelves.
Oh, and the writing's not too shabby either, darn him. Sorry Mr. McDonell, just a momentary flash of seething jealousy. In case you can't tell, we might have wanted to dismiss this cautionary tale of spoiled rotten teen life on the Upper East Side of present day Manhattan, but the novel is too straightforward and fresh to resist. McDonell's hero is White Mike, a strangely clean, disturbingly moral drug dealer who has mostly dropped out of his very prestigious prep school to sell dope to kids from pretty much every prestigious prep school in town. As White Mike makes his rounds during the week between Christmas and New Year's Eve, we meet a variety of his disenchanted and disenfranchised clientele-somehow, McDonell wins our caring, and occasionally our compassion, for these zany kids who have so much and appreciate so little. You sort of want to yank away their cell phones and Discmans and offer them a snack and an afghan. As you might expect, kids with tons of money, plenty of Christmas break free time, and complete lack of parental care or supervision can whip up a hell of a New Year's party. But the week, the novel, and the evening culminate in a surprising crescendo of passion that's enough to smack the apathy out of the most jaded reader or character. Way to go, Nick McDonell!
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