Twelve

McDonnell, Nick

ISBN 10: 0802117171 / ISBN 13: 9780802117175

Published by Grove Press, New York, 2002

About this Item

244pp. 8vo. Paper and cloth over boards, stamped spine. Signed by the author on title page. Book has a complete number line from 1-10, is unread, unmarked, unclipped, tight, bright, and Brodart protected. Author's debut fiction. Blurbs by Richard Price, Joan Didion, and Hunter S. Thompson. Seller Inventory # 0002337

Bibliographic Details

Title: Twelve

Publisher: Grove Press, New York

Publication Date: 2002

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: Fine

Dust Jacket Condition: fine

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: First edition. First Printing.

About this title

Synopsis:

White Mike, a seventeen-year-old prep school dropout and drug dealer, and his privileged peers spend their time partying with sex, drugs, and escalating violence in the pursuit of ever more exotic and dangerous thrills.

Review:

On the surface, Nick McDonell's debut novel Twelve (written when the well-connected former prep-schooler was 17) feels like an East Coast Less Than Zero: the laconic style and episodic plot; the privileged ennui, drugs, and pop culture sensibility (with sprinklings of Prada, FUBU, North Face, and Nokia replacing Zero's Armani, English Beat T-shirts, Wayfarer sunglasses, and Betamax); the Christmas break setting; even the italicized flashbacks--it's all there. But Twelve also shares its casual, youthful arrogance with the jaded aggressiveness and jagged style of Larry Clark's Kids.

McDonell has crafted a pulsing narrative that clips along at an after-hours pace, pulling the reader along like an ominous rip tide, shifting easily from the Upper East Side to Harlem to Central Park to introduce a cast of loosely connected characters. White Mike, Twelve's clean-living, Cheerios-loving, milkshake-drinking drug dealer, drives the majority of the barely-there plot. ("Mike uses a teaspoon to eat his cereal, not a big soup spoon, because he likes to have less milk in his mouth with each bite" is about as deep as it gets.) Character development is limited to an easy shorthand ("Long legs, large breasts, blond hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones.") that results in a simple surface-skimming, leaving one too many caricatures of the very youth culture McDonell is writing about. Readers will see the blood-spattered, penultimate set piece coming down Fifth Avenue from page one, but any potential shock value or drama is immediately deflated in Twelve's head-scratching hangover of a denouement. --Brad Thomas Parsons