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4.5 • 4 Ratings
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- $6.99
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- $6.99
Publisher Description
Nick and his friends have everything: expensive clothes, beautiful apartments, rich friends. The island of Manhattan is at their feet. But underneath this picture-perfect world of private schools and private parties lies a gang world filled with drinking, drugs, casual sex, and graffiti. And Nick wants out. He's had enough of the life, and he's in love with his best friend, Kris, even though she's oblivious to his feelings. When Kris's younger brother becomes a gang target, Nick thinks he can help, even if it means putting his own life at risk.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"When you have money and everything still blows most of the time, you don't want to spend your life just making more." This sentiment drives the Manhattan private-school students in Coburn's debut novel to emulate the thuggish nihilism they see on MTV, creating tiered hierarchies of gangs, talking like rappers but wearing Rolexes and Ralph Lauren shirts. Narrator Nick, a reputedly legendary graffiti artist, has had enough of this scene and tries to get on with his life and more specifically, to tell his best friend, Kris, that he has always loved her. Kris's drug-addled mess of a brother, Danny, runs afoul of the vicious MKII gang, and when Nick intervenes, he finds himself in the crosshairs of the MKII also. The two plot threads never quite mesh. The relationship between Nick and Kris is artfully conveyed, painful and bittersweet. But the sound bites of upscale white-kid ghetto-speak sound hollow ("That Nippon place is whack... sushi's mad dry by the time it gets here"), at times coming across as parody. Ages 14-up.
