| Twelve
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Amazon.com Review
Creating a sensation around the world, Twelve established its seventeen-year-old author as a powerful voice of the new millennium. The chilling novel follows prep school dropout White Mike through the week between Christmas and New Year’s 1999, as he takes a year off to deal an alluring new drug to his privileged peers on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.The kids of Twelve have it all; Chris and Claude and Hunter and Laura have the best, and most, of everything, but are constantly looking for something more exotic, and more dangerous. But Twelve is not a coming-of-age story, because these kids never had a childhood—their parents are off on holiday in Bali or business in Brussels, leaving hired help to look the other way as the kids stay home alone in their multimillion-dollar town houses, partying with drugs and sex and, in the end, much worse.
From page one, the pace is set toward an apocalyptic climax. In the penultimate party scene, when we thought we couldn’t be surprised, we are shocked. And throughout the book, where there is an excess of everything but hope, we are filled with that very emotion as White Mike struggles for nothing less than his soul.
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
Technical Details
- ISBN13: 9780802140128- Condition: New
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By Sonya (Chicago)
I read "An Expensive Education", which I thought was terrible. I decided to give this book a try because of all the rave reviews. I only have two positive things to say about this book. Number one is that it was short. I started it on my commute home on a Thursday and finished it on my commute in on a Friday. Secondly, it was a more familiar subject for the author, wealthy Manhattan teens, so the situations and characters made more sense than the ones in "An Expensive Education." Overall, it was a snoozefest. Nothing interesting happened and the characters were shallow brats. I hate that it was made into a movie. It is also no surprise to me that the author's godfather was the publisher. hmmm.
By FelixThatcher
One of the major problems with this book, I feel, other than the fact that Nick McDonell is a talentless brat, is that it reads like a childrens book but deals with real problems.
And the plotholes? Claude, used to do "blizzards" of cocaine and then kills everyone? What is that? If we apply that logic to the real world, then we'd have there'd be a lot more dead people around.
And the chapters? Seriously, dude? One sentence and you're done with the chapter? Take a couple of classes and learn how to write.
This kid better count his lucky stars because if his godfather wasn't the head of a publishing company, his "manuscript" would have gotten laughed into a garbage can.
By Beck (Washington, DC)
I thought Nick McDonell's book Twelve was an all right read; given his age when he wrote it, I'd give it higher marks. I don't think reading about self-indulgent rich kids from NYC is especially interesting but it's a fast read on the train going to work.
By DONALD G. FOX (Minneapolis, MN USA)
All right, this book is indeed somewhat immature in its attempt to emulate Bret Easton Ellis and other authors listed by other reviewers. However, I believe that this is a successful novel. I really don't care what advantages this particular author had in marketing and publishing: I was drawn into the characters and the overall movement of the story. Yes, some of the characters are more faintly drawn than others, but that is part of the appeal of such novels. Within the characters thoughts and actions (or lack of action) lie glimpses of their adolescent worlds of despondency, ennui and existential despair. Watching the story as the characters' independent and interdependent decisions lead to a harrowing climax (which can be rightfully criticized as somewhat unjustified in such a story) is an existentialist action in itself: we get to peek at this world of privilege and power through the keyhole hoping that no one will peek and see that we are peeking. Actually, this is an excellent example of the genre that Ellis and others have created. I hope that Mr. McDonnell's future works are more fully developed and even more insightful.
By Angela S. (Vancouver, WA)
I flat out hated this book. It's basically about of a bunch of rich bored teenagers at random spots in New York City. The ending, while I felt it finally got a little interesting, is a huge copout. Whenever I see this book on a shelf at a book store I get the urge to toss it in a trashcan (not that I will ever do that).
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