Little Chicago - Hardcover

Adam Rapp

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1886910723 ISBN 13: 9781886910720

Publisher: Front Street, 2002

Synopsis

Offers young adults a story about an eleven-year-old boy who, after being sexually abused by his mother's boyfriend, is put back in his mother's custody by a social worker where he is left to deal with the pain and confusion of what happened to him on his attitudes of people who learn his secret. Reprint.

About this title

About the Author

Adam Rapp is an award-winning playwright whose plays (including Trueblinka and Blackfrost) have been presented in major cities all over the country. He lives in New York City.

Reviews

Rapp (The Copper Elephant; The Buffalo Tree) turns in his bleakest work yet with this abandon-all-hope story of an 11-year-old victim of sexual abuse and neglect. Blacky Brown, the narrator, is first met as he flees, naked, from the home of his mother's boyfriend in the middle of the night. Blacky does everything right: he asks his older sister for help (his single mother is at work), and when she and a friend take him to the hospital, he tells the social worker from Children's Services about the boyfriend's abuses. At school he reaches out to his best (and only) friend. But Rapp knocks out every apparent support. Blacky's mother wants to keep seeing her boyfriend and seems repulsed by Blacky; the social worker doesn't follow up; the erstwhile friend tells all the kids at school, who taunt him. When Blacky befriends the other school pariah, who encourages Blacky to resist the bullying, she becomes the victim of a prank so brutal that she is last seen unconscious, lying on a stretcher. After several more traumas, the conclusion leaves Blacky to a grim fate. The unrelenting darkness, which may seem brave or honest to teen readers, loses some of its authenticity in Blacky's delivery; although it generally reflects Blacky's naivete and slow-wittedness as well as his shock, it also contains metaphors and vocabulary that, more sophisticated than the messenger, reveal the hand of the author at work. Ages 12-up.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Gr. 10-12. Rapp's latest novel opens as 11-year-old Blacky Brown runs from his mother's boyfriend, who has sexually abused him. Blacky is examined at the hospital, then released to his impoverished, single mother, who leaves Blacky to face the ramification of the incident on his own. His drug-addled older sister and remote younger brother are no help, and when Blacky tells his only friend, he's rejected, the whole school finds out, and vicious bullies harass him. He finds solidarity with the other school freak, a girl whose friendship sustains him. But as the disturbing open ending shows, that's not enough to shield him from his own self-loathing and the cruelty and neglect of others. Written in Blacky's voice, this unrelentingly bleak novel shows the terror, bewilderment, and damage of child molestation. Some of the scenes' repellent details verge on the gratuitous and occasionally the sensational: Blacky's mother's oozing eczema, for example; a scene in which another man forces Blacky to handle his penis. But Rapp creates a powerful voice in Blacky, whose honest, raw account shows desperate struggles just to keep breathing and moving: "My legs are ok, I tell myself. My legs are good." Gillian Engberg
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Front Street
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1886910723
• ISBN 13: 9781886910720
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 208