American Youth: A Novel

solid debut:
The influence of Cormac McCarthy is strongly, if gallingly, present in Phil LaMarche's otherwise solid debut. LaMarche opens with an epigraph from McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses, a reference to scars that seems somewhat too obvious, given the main character's bad habit. LaMarche's most significant nod to McCarthy similarly, and also pointlessly, hits the reader over the head: throughout the novel, he refers to his adolescent protagonist simply as "the boy" -- much like "the kid" in Blood Meridian. Yeah, I get it: Ted is young and inexperienced, but he's also an everyman (everyboy?). These are annoying and derivative touches LaMarche need not have used, for his book would have succeeded just as well without relying on someone's else bag of tricks. In what is essentially a new take on the old coming-of-age story, Ted LeClare, a rising freshman at a big regional high school in rural New England, loads the rifle involved in an accident that leaves a friend dead. (The friend's brother actually pulls the trigger.) Ted's mother urges him to deny loading the gun, and so he does, thus inciting Ted's descent into self-mutilation, violence, sex, and drugs as he seeks some kind of redemption and searches for his identity in the wake of the tragedy. He becomes tied up with a right-wing gang called American Youth, whose members are almost cartoon-like in their philosophical mutterings about states rights and guns. And Ted must contend, as must the other characters, with his hometown's changing demographics. Although it is currently experiencing an economic downturn, new residents from Boston have been flooding into the town, transforming land into upscale housing developments and bringing their more progressive values with them. (I was reminded somewhat of Russell Banks' Affliction, in which a similar tension is at play in a rural New England town.) In short it is a recipe for disaster for a fourteen-year-old -- or anyone, for that matter. Much of the book seems very run-of-the-mill, like the cigarettes Ted sneaks or his awkward sexual encounters. But his moral and psychological development has its ups and downs and surprises, but LaMarche succeeds in making it believable. LaMarche errs in drawing so heavily from Cormac McCarthy, but his potential as a serious writer shines through. I look forward to reading him as his writing matures.

Great first novel.:
This is a short and very well-written novel about a few troubling months in the life of a high-school boy. The book starts off when the boy is showing off his father's gun collection to two of his friends and one of them accidentally shoots and kills the other. The boy copes with the impending legal situation, the ostracism from the other kids at school, and a multitude of other high-school issues. The thing that struck me most about the book was how real and believable the themes seemed, even as some of the situations border on satire. LaMarche obviously did his homework on a number of subjects, just to add enough detail to make it real (I even found the scene of the boy visiting the emergency room when he bit his tongue to be exactly the same as mine when it happened to me). His writing is deft and sparse. There is no fat in the sentences or in the story. There is no sense that he is trying to prove anything with his style, and he is heavy-handed with nothing. I found it all very true and refreshing. And although the writing is sparse, the themes of youth, loyalty, and clashing lifestyles feel deep without being beaten to death. LaMarche's first novel is a great modern take on the coming-of-age novel.

Really great debut fiction:
I recently read this short novel and found myself thinking about some of the scenes days after finishing - always the sign of a great book. The main character, Ted LeClare (or "the boy" as he's frequently called throughout the book) gets in a gun accident with some friend/acquaintances and the book is about the fall out from this accident -- where one of the kids is shot and killed. One of the things I really liked about this novel was that it didn't hit you over the head with a gun position pro or con - the scenes where Ted has just gone hunting with his uncle and where they're cleaning and preparing the dear were great. I know nothing about hunting or guns but I loved reading the perspective of this working class new england family and their real and true history with guns. The locals (Ted's family included) clashed wonderfully with the new class of folks moving in to town and into the McMansions. Ted's mother asks the investigating policeman, "are they one of us?" about the parents of the dead child and it's clear what she's asking. The separation between these two groups is wonderfully laid out and leaves you wondering how this is playing out in gentrifying cities across the country. Another fantastic aspect of this novel was the shortness and tightness of the story. The book reads as though every sentence has been accounted for and that is truly a feat as well as a treat for the reader. I recently saw an independent movie called "This is England" - interestingly it had almost the same storyline: boy with absent father gets into trouble and falls in with the wrong crowd of young people to disasterous end. In "This is England" the group is a bunch of skin heads. In this novel, the "American Youth" of the title refers to the name a group of misguided kids call themselves. I loved the convoluted yet passionate thinking displayed by all of the american youth kids. Overall I really recommend this novel, it is a short, quick read that manages to pack a lot of insight into a story about these troubled New England teens. So much contemporary fiction is written about wry, ironic, overly smart Manhattanite teens or young adults trying to find themselves, and it was really nice to read this thoughtful coming-of-age story about a different set of struggles.

Horifyingly Real:
I turned the pages with increasing anxiety in this gripping debut novel, "American Youth" by Phil Lamarche. Part of my mind was thinking that it should be required reading for all new parents, while the other part wanted to close it and make it all go away. The protagonist, always referred to as "the boy" in the narration, makes one bad choice after another steadily and stealthily increasing the reader's desire to make him "Grow up!" "See sense!" "Make better choices!" - we want to scream "WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?" when it's clear that young people often AREN'T thinking...at least not rationally. New studies have indicated that teen-ager's brains aren't fully formed and that their capacity for rational thought often isn't mature until the early twenties. (This summer, here in Houston, there have been two very tragic accidents involving teens, cars, trains and bad choices that have claimed the lives at least six young people.) This excellent novel reminded me, yet again, how perilous those years are, in part because of the influences of our current "accept no responsibility" society and the sub-cultures that encourage teen angst rather than channeling the positives. This is a difficult book to read while it's impossible to put down. I'll be looking for Mr. Lamarche's next novel as well. Great job.

A generation desperate to get out of a downward spiral:
American Youth is one of those novels that seems to touch a chord with its readers--summing up all that hasn't been said about a culture and bringing to light a dirty secret everyone knows but no one had been able to put into words like this. It simultaneously manages to be ultra light and intensely heavy. The story reads quickly, forcing the reader forward, even as the sumptuous prose pulls you back to re-read, and then read again to pull out the subtle nuances, the hints and connections, and the symbols which are everywhere. Ted, the protagonist, initially known as "the boy" is small, insecure and struggling within the confines of his life even before the accident which transforms his life. The local economy is bad, and his salesman father moves 8 hours south to work while Ted and his mother wait for non-existent buyers to purchase their house so they can join him. Ted is about to start high school and in his summer break, spends time with his larger friend Terry throwing Molotov cocktails at an abandoned development and wrecking the `for sale' signs in front of his house. Ennui and discomfort surround him, and the reader immediately gets the sense that Ted is an observant boy, quiet and uncomfortable in his skin. When Ted invites his well-off neighbours, the Dennisons, over to play, the boys are obviously bored with Ted's lack of television stations, lack of soda, and lack of entertainment, so Ted allows himself to be drawn into showing them his rifle. He also allows himself to do something he shouldn't--load the gun, and then guiltily checks to if his mother is watching. In that split second, one of the brothers shoots the other one, an action which changes the direction of the book, and both opens and closes a series of doors in Ted's world. On every level, the prose in this book is superbly rendered--taut, intense, and forward moving, while at the same time retaining an almost painful sense of introspection that allows the reader to get under Ted's skin. In the lonely aftermath of an accident that leaves Ted feeling culpable, mainly because of his lie about loading the gun, Ted begins high school, where he is sought after by a group of boys who form a kind of gang which they call `American Youth.' The story pivots around Ted's coming of age as he tries to find ways to deal with his guilt, his increasing confusion towards the gang, his family, his growing sexuality, and above all, his sense of self. The morality of the book is clear and becomes clearer to Ted as the narrative develops along with his own maturity, but never does LaMarche allow his fingernail paring narrator to interrupt, nor does he ever tell the reader what to think or how to interpret events. As the gang's brutality, bigotry and anger becomes more apparent, Ted's own anger and pain rise to the fore and he has to confront the inchoate demons that torture him far more than the gang's violence. The myopic disfunctionality of Ted's world isn't a distopia. It's here and now, as the news makes all too clear. It might not only be America either, although the relationship between political bigotry and widespread gun ownership is something that seems particularly endemic to the US. Although the story is a deeply troubling one, raising complex questions about a range of issues--from the myopic violence and self-hatred that fills the lives of these hopeless children to the speechless emptiness of Ted's family life--it isn't depressing. Perhaps it's the poetic beauty of Ted's inner world; the correspondences he sees, or the courageous decisions he takes that allows the characterization to rise above it's plot. There are so many subtle symbols, connections and correspondences. The `American Youth' gang insist that Ted take on the role of hero, forcing him to make a choice that turns him into a real hero. Ted's mother throws a decorative rug over a missing rectangle of carpet, and tells him that the truth doesn't matter. But Ted knows full well that it does; that there are choices to be made in life; that there is such a thing as right and wrong that transcends both the accidents that define us, and the physical pain of scars, beatings and loneliness. The book is full of rich passages, a deep sense of what is powerful and beautiful in human nature, and a heady dose of symbolism shoring up the desolation of its setting. It's Ted's deep understanding of that desolation and his sense of there being something more, both within and without him that makes this such a powerful read. American Youth is a perfectly rendered novel which manages that difficult balance between absolute topicality--this is a novel for our times--and timeless beauty. This is both a classic piece of literature and an important chronicle of a generation desperate to get out of a downward spiral. Magdalena Ball is the author of Sleep Before Evening