Synopses & Reviews
Sold to fourteen publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of the year. A chilling novel of urban adolescence, it appeared on The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, London Times, and Sydney Morning Herald best-seller lists, and on The New York Times extended list. Set among the privileged prep-school students of Manhattan's Upper East Side, Twelve follows White Mike, a dropout drug dealer, through the week between Christmas and New Year's 1999. Twelve is not a coming-of-age story, because its 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.
Review
"As fast as speed, as relentless as acid....Mr. McDonell sketches in these characters with brisk authority, deftly cutting from one subplot to another in quick, cinematic takes." Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
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"He maintains a teasing affection for the absurdities of adolescence an impressive feat of synthesis." Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review
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"[McDonell] employs a prose style that affects pithiness and punch a bit of Hemingway here, a bit of Hammett there...beneath the tough-guy veneer, a soft inner core of sentimentality." Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post
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"Seventeen-year-old Nick McDonell, like the young Jim Carroll, displays a frightening accuity in his astonishing debut...a plunge into the depraved realm of overprivileged, drug-gobbling preppies." Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair
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"Nick McDonells Twelve is an astonishing rush of a first novel, all heat and ice and inexorable narrative drive..." Joan Didion
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"Nick McDonell is the real thing, a powerful young writer with the look of a dangerous freak and very sharp teeth. The ratio of age to talent is horrifying. His trick is he writes the truth." Hunter S. Thompson
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"Twelve has a mentorless feel, like something that percolated from his experiences and came out fresh." Los Angeles Times
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"The artfulness of Twelve is undeniable. The story moves, dips into big issues of race and class, and has great writing that reveals what McDonell calls the spiritual debilitation of a generation." Heidi Benson, San Francisco Chronicle
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"An arresting debut....[McDonell] knows how to make you keep turning pages....He knows how to establish a mood (completely creepy) that he sustains to the bitter, blood-soaked end." Malcolm Jones, Newsweek
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"The novel, both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness, is briskly paced and snappy, name-checking both Camus and Eminem in its sketches of the nihilistic spawn of Manhattans big fish." Joe Heim, People
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"Written with an exquisite eye for detail and character development....A worthy page turner." Deborah Schoeneman, New York Post
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"Theres no denying this young authors talent....In cinematic style, McDonell cuts from one scene to another, one character to another....Remarkable." Polly Paddock, Charlotte Observer
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"[A] hot-hot, smartly composed debut....It is clear that the truth, if not necessarily the facts, is what McDonell hopes to convey through the bleak grittiness of Twelve." Margarita Fichtner, The Miami Herald
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"Impressive....[McDonell] can write, and with style....A good novel, period." Emiliana Sandoval, Detroit Free Press
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"An absorbing ride through a weird version of counter-culture." Arizona Republic
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"McDonell has the guts to take on the nihilism of todays youth, a subject thats been hyped post-Columbine but rarely explored." Sarah Ferguson, High Times
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"Sparse, fiercely unsentimental prose....[An] engrossing read." John Green, Booklist
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"A smart, sharply written fable of drugs and violence." Tim Adams, The Observer (London)
Synopsis
Sold to 14 publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of the year. A chilling novel of urban adolescence that is "both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness" (People), it has appeared on multiple bestseller lists.
Synopsis
Sold to fourteen publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of 2002. It quickly established its seventeen-year-old author as an astonishing voice of the new millennium. A chilling novel of urban adolescence that is "both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness" (Joe Heim, People), it has appeared on The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, London Times, and Sydney Morning Herald best-seller lists, and on The New York Times extended list. Set among the privileged prep-school students of Manhattan's Upper East Side, Twelve follows White Mike, a dropout drug dealer, through the week between Christmas and New Year's. 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.
Synopsis
Creating a sensation around the world when it was first published,
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 Years 1999, as he takes a year off to deal an alluring new drug to his privileged peers on Manhattans Upper East Side. But
Twelve is not a coming-of-age story, because its kids never had a childhoodtheir 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.
About the Author
Nick McDonell was born in 1984 in New York City.