[.ca] Twelve (ISBN 0802140122)

From Amazon.com:
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

it's alright:
For a light-weight beach read, this book will fit the bit well. It's not exactly the best of reads, but I definitely recognized parts of my childhood in it. I suppose the book makes a lot more sense to someone who grew up in that environment. I thought the book was great, but my midwestern friends couldn't get into it at all.

Interesting story concept, but still needs work:
I found this book completely by accident while browsing the bookshelf of a vacation home I rented while vacationing in Hawaii. I thought I would give it a try, but I was very disappointed. The good news, however, was that the story is a quick one (I finished it in around 3 to 4 hours). The plot tells of a rather interesting story, but the characters are poorly developed and everything is pretty much lacking in detail. In addition, I did not really care for the way the author told the story. He basically jumps from scene to scene with some scenes lasting only a paragraph or two. I've seen this work well in other literary works, but I felt that it did not lend itself well to this one. The book ends rather abruptly in a scene that makes very little sense and left me wondering why I picked the book up in the first place. Now, I realize that a very young author wrote this and it is his first published novel. I can see a lot of creativity there and I am sure that his future works will be much more polished.

Great book:
I found this book really good. It is very succinct and does not elaborate on emotions or even events. It depicts the New York teenage high society in a cruel and harsh light, which totally fits the mental state and experiences of the characters. It is a glimpse into a dark world which is often idealised by outsiders. I can only be more eye-opening that it was written by a 19 year-old.

Good book:
Twelve was one of my top favorite reads. I enjoyed its basic vision of a life lived as if consequences happen to other people, I like the theme of universal alienation and hedonism, and could empathise with most of the characters' basic disgust with the world around them. Why not?

Believe the hype:
With wonderfully blunt descriptions and carefully formulated insights into the upper classes of the American society, characters and events are worryingly believable. In telling a story that everyone knew was happening but nobody wanted to admit, it may go on to be as revolutionary as 'The Catcher In the Rye' was in its day, and secure its deserved status as a cult classic of our time. Like 'The Catcher...', people will formualte their own views on 'Twelve', and be they good or bad, they will surely prompt some sort of debate. You will love it or hate it, but either way, you have to read it.