Product Description

'Can we please all stand and have a moment of silence for those students who died. And can we now have a moment of silence for those who killed them.'Nick McDonell's electrifying novel tells the story of a fictional drug called Twelve and its devastating effects on the beautiful rich and desperate poor of New York City. A bleak Manhattan midwinter and a group of wealthy teenagers, left to their own devices by disregarding parents, delve into the excesses of drugs, sex and the most chilling acts of violence imaginable. Hunter - falsely accused of murder after a fight on the basketball courts; White Mike - a straight-A student who makes a fortune selling illegal substances; Laura - gorgeous but obsessed with a fabulous new designer drug called 'twelve'; and Claude - whose trips into the shadier corners of Chinatown have fuelled a macabre fascination with deadly weapons. From page one, this novel pulsates towards its apocalyptic climax. Cool and cruel and utterly compulsive, TWELVE is the d?but novel of 2002.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #649425 in Books
• Published on: 2002-07-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 244 pages

Review
17-year-old Nick McDonell's debut novel centres around White Mike, an upper-class drug dealer, and the days just after Christmas leading up to a New Year's Eve party destined to go down in history for all the wrong reasons. For this is New York City, and the bored, ultra-rich teenagers who roam free with seemingly no parental guidance are jaded and tough, fed a steady diet of Camus, cynicism and concealed weapons. Hunter is a nice kid who likes to play basketball in Harlem. Jessica is an athlete, popular and self-confident. Molly and Tobias are models. Sara is beautiful and famous not only in her school but all the surrounding private boarding academies. Chris and Claude's parents are never home, so their parties are legendary. Timmy and Mark are two white boys desperate to be black. Andrew's a quiet guy who has enough connections to save him from total obscurity. All these kids need White Mike's assistance at some point or another, never more so than for some Twelve, a new drug unlike anything they've ever experienced before. When at last they all come together on New Year's Eve, the drugs come out. And then the guns. McDonell has the bold and confident voice of a teenager, and his characters are clearly well known to him, as is their way of life, their speech and their conduct. However, the sheer number of characters proves a burden as, aside from White Mike, only the barest of surfaces is scratched before hastily moving on the next character's brief sketch and relevance to the plot. For all the vibrant attitude and gritty realism, the novel's not quite three-dimensional enough. Comparisons have already been made with Bret Easton Ellis, and the climactic party scene is admittedly reminiscent of Less Than Zero. But this is a new generation of wasted youth, the younger siblings of Ellis's coked up late '80s kids, inheritors of false corporate social responsibility, political correctness and September 11th. Once McDonell polishes and focuses his narrative, he'll be an important voice for the 21st-century generation drowning in a sea of drugs and guns. (Kirkus UK)

Gary Flockhart, Scotland Online
Twelve captures the spirit of a generation in a way seldom seen since Catcher In The Rye... poetic, sexy, unsettling’

Edward Smith, Sunday Telegraph
'For once, the hype… is all true. McDonell has a brilliant ear for dialogue and a poetically concise prose style.’

Customer Reviews

"Less than zero" 15 years on
I enjoyed this book as I read it, though over time I realise how little effect it's actually had on me. On picking this up I found it hard to put down - and read the whole book in 3 sittings. It reads well and is entertaining - with a choppy, cut-up style and some interesting characters. He writes with a good turn-of-phrase and you get a good feel for the types of people and places he portrays.

However, if you've read 'Less than zero' or (dare I say it!) seen Beverly Hills 90210 (!) you'll be familiar with the themes (obviously given here on a far harsher scale) - i.e. screwed up rich kids with too much cash and not enough love. The 'apocolyptic' ending is no surprise at all.

If I was 17 and I'd written this I'd be very proud (come to think of it if I'd written it at all at any age I'd be pretty chuffed!) It's ultimately an enjoyable read and I'll read reviews of his next one with interest now that that 'difficult' first 'semi-autobiographical' (which it seems quite heavily to be) novel is out of the way.

nice work
it's well crafted and written in a careful, spare style. it tackles Easton Ellis type themes - rich kids who don't know what to do with themselves and are alienated from society by remote parents and by having too much of everything. contains some thoughtful observations. the author is much more comfortable with his male characters than his female ones - overall, he clearly doesn't think much of his girls who are thick, manipulative, and mentally confused. the ending was a slight cop out. it's a very readable book and a wonderful achievement for such a young writer, but the terrain is one we've seen before, and the author brought more style than novelty to it.

The Children of the Revolution Will Not Want It.
The commonest comparison for McDonell's precocious debut has been Brett Easton Ellis' "Less than Zero", probably since they both use the same device of narrating different episodes from the points of view of their various different characters. Also, like Ellis, McDonell seems to be attempting to find something of existential significance in the everyday - his popcultural references are certainly bang up-to-date. But there's a debt owed here to Jay McInerney's "Bright Lights, Big City" - which in turn borrowed the whole idea of an aimless everyman from Salinger's seminal "Catcher in the Rye". The writing is sharp enough to make the plot engaging but it can come across as a little contrived at times and feels like McDonell is trying just a bit too hard to ape a specific narrative voice: that of the world-weary youth who sees an essential emptiness in modern living. So while it's not as accomplished as the soundbitten hype would have you believe, neither is it as bad as some of the understandably disappointed reviewers have ended up feeling. It'll be interesting to see what he comes up with next.