Twelve

Author: Nick McDonell
Rough Price: $20 pb
Publisher: Text Publishing
ISBN: 1-877008-25-7 pb

The not-quite-yet Brett Easton Ellis that is Nick McDonell, had this book published when he was still in high school. He's a bastard, but he's a bastard who can write.

If you can get over the fact that this novel's scope is limited to Rich, New York brats, this novel is truly something to aspire to. It is Nihilistic, smooth, and captures some moments of extreme beauty.

Hunter saw what was happening. He and White Mike were sinking, because all the water was rolling back toward Ninety-sixth Street, collecting there at the top of the hill. And Hunter was on the ground walking again, and he was below the cross at the MetLife building. And as he looked, he saw a wave rise up and fly toward him, towering even above the buildings, rising out of the canyon. And the wave was so dark it was black, and it blocked out the moon, and it was bearing down on him and White Mike. And the image was suddenly there in his mind, forever, of this wave crashing down on Park Avenue, and the trees on fire hundreds of feet below the crest, and the flames reflected off the inside of the face, and the water then looked dull orange and green, and the moon suddenly shot through with its white light.

The story is of White Mike, a 19 year old who is stuck in the rut between high school and college, and who turns to drug dealing, despite the fact that he has never done drugs himself. In a manner not dissimilar to Brett Easton Ellis, the narrative shifts betweeen perspectives for the five days leading up to New Years Eve. It touches on Timmy and Mark Rothko two rich white boys playing at being poor black boys; Hunter, White Mike's friend, who spends the majority of the story in jail for a murder he didn't commit; Jessica, a beautiful, but not quite popular girl who becomes hooked on a new drug called Twelve; Claude, a coke-addled new-age samurai; and many others. In the moments he spends with each character, McDonell produces a series of desires and summarily discredits every one of them.

This book is a lesson, but it's also deceptively simple and easy to read in one sitting. It's worth spending the money on this one. I just finished it for the second time and it has definitely got re-read value.

On a completely unrelated note. I severely dislike McDonell for being so good so young.

Tim Baxter