The cover of Twelve throws hints at you of what you’re in for: a young girl, fashionably dressed, moves breezily across it in monochromatic indigo, brushing past the reader and right off the edge. Where is she going? What’s in the oversized backpack? Wherever and whatever it is, we’re cognisant that it won’t end well. There’s bloodsplatter like gunshot holes, red across the blue.
It’s a well-designed cover, maybe appropriately so given the strength and colour of the prose behind it. For this, Nick McDonell’s first novel, is as gripping and gritty as they come.
White Mike is a teenaged drug dealer, working the dirty winter streets of New York. White Mike is a tortured soul…try as he might, he is not able to disengage himself from the consequences of his actions. Maybe it’s because, unlike most dealers, White Mike does not do drugs—especially this dangerous new one, “twelve”. Free to see clearly, he sees too much, and it begins to wear him down.
The novel is populated with believable characters, drawn with Dickensian skill by their creator. Nearly all are teens, rich white ones woven into the grotty fabric that is New York. This should not be surprising, given the fact that the author was sixteen or seventeen himself when he wrote it, and living in New York city. The resulting realism is only enhanced by his adeptness with words; the book reads less like a first novel than an eleventh. The word vivid sticks in the mind. You are there, walking the streets with White Mike, wondering along with him how this story will end. The interplay of personalities in the book build on the reader, drawing you in.
There’s grit in the book, of course—what novel about teens doesn’t have that? There is sex, there is drinking and drugs, there is violence to be sure. Still, the story somehow failed to depress this reader, even the bits where things turn tragic. Maybe it’s the ingrained optimism present in the mind of every adolescent (again, the author was a kid at the time) peaking through between the lines. Or maybe it’s just the fascinating, gripping insight into the lives of this particular subset of youth—wealthy, bored and ignored:
The two don’t move for a second, and White Mike looks from one to the other. Just a couple of soft kids standing on the street, trying to get some weed, have some fun, fill the time, talk a certain way, be a certain way because the way they come from is unclear and uncool and with no direction, because no one really has anything to do, all across the city no one has anything to do, so they all do the same thing and make the same references to pop culture and their childhood cartoons (like, Ghostbusters was so much better than Ninja Turtles), and everyone wants to get laid and be the cool kid and everyone wants to be a jock, and everyone wants and wants and wants. White Mike is worried now about what will happen if other kids start showing up at his door.
We follow White Mike and the others through the streets of their lives, in and out of arcades, bars and house parties. We see snippets of the interactions between the kids and their parents (rare), the kids and their teachers, the kids and other adults that drift in and out of their lives in the way that can only happen in a giant city. We learn that it’s not only the kids who are messed up here.
There’s poignancy. We see two separate teens on two separate occasions, camped outside their parents’ closed bedroom doors, wanting, waiting.
There’s humour, too, now and then. The black-talking white kids Timmy and Mark Rothko are penned delightfully over the top. Still, even their attempts to be something other than themselves are just a bit touching and sad.
New York City’s a character, too; McDonell sees to that with polished prose. In a world where so many novels—even good ones—are now written as straightforward as computer manuals, it’s nice to find an author who can still work a word or two to create a dramatic setting. Seventeen years old? Good grief.
Young or not, this new writer is a force to be reckoned with. The cover even contains praise for his book by Hunter S. Thompson, in a slightly self-congratulatory mood (“I’m afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine.”) I see there are already other titles on the shelf by McDonell. I can’t wait to see the books he’s followed up with.
In the meantime, I recommend this one.
