Twelve
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4.6 • 5 Ratings
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- $8.99
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- $8.99
Publisher Description
New York Times Notable Book: “An exceptional, assured debut [that] captures the zeitgeist of confused adolescents and a sick culture post-Columbine.”—Hartford Courant
A national bestseller that inspired a major motion picture, this chilling novel follows prep school dropout White Mike through the week between Christmas and New Year’s 1999, as he deals an alluring new drug to his privileged peers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. The kids of Twelve have it all; Chris and Claude and Hunter and Laura have the best, and most, of everything, but are constantly looking for something more exotic, and more dangerous. But Twelve is not a coming-of-age story, because these kids never had a childhood—their parents are off on holiday in Bali or business in Brussels, leaving hired help to look the other way as the kids stay home alone in their multimillion-dollar town houses, partying, surrounded by drugs and sex—and, in the end, much worse.
“Renders Manhattan’s cosseted Upper East Side with both the casual authority of an insider and the wry distance of an observer…impressive.”—Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review
“Riveting in its no-holds-barred depiction of teenage nihilism.”—Jon Land, Providence Journal
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"White Mike" dresses in an overcoat and lives with his dad on Manhattan's Upper East Side (his mom died of breast cancer not too long ago). The 17-year-old doesn't smoke, doesn't drink and doesn't do drugs. He dropped out of high school and now sells drugs pot and an Ecstasy-like upper called "twelve" to the city's moneyed teens. In this shocker of a first novel, McDonell who was 17 when he wrote it carries readers through White Mike's frantically spinning world, one alternately peopled with obscenely wealthy teenagers who live in gated townhouses with parents rarely in town and FUBU-clad basketball players in Harlem. In terse, controlled prose, McDonell describes five days in White Mike's life during Christmas break. He introduces a host of characters, ranging from Sara Ludlow ("the hottest girl at her school by, like, a lot") to Lionel ("a creepy dude" with "brown and yellow bloodshot eyes" who also sells drugs), writing mainly in the present tense, but sometimes flashing back in italics. His prose darts from one scene and character to the next, much like a cab zipping down city streets, halting quickly at a red light and then accelerating madly as soon as the light turns green. And although it brims with New York references e.g., the MetLife Building and Lenox Hill Hospital this is really a story about excess and its effects. The final scene, at a raging New Year's Eve party, will leave readers stunned, as well as curious as to what might come next from this precocious writer.
