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Set in New York over four days between Christmas and New Year's,
TWELVE, the debut novel from Nick McDonell, takes the reader on a
dizzying journey of teenage sex, drugs, and violence. Moving at
breakneck speed and filled with interchangeable characters, the
novel reads like a collision between MTV and "Cops."

At the center of the story is White Mike, a philosophical private
school dropout who now sells drugs to New York's richest and most
spoiled kids. All the money in the world cannot save White Mike and
his friends and customers from loneliness, anger, and frustration.
Despite these strong emotions, or perhaps because they are overcome
by them, McDonell's characters seem empty and two-dimensional. This
shallowness, however, further conveys the motif of
hopelessness.

The young men and women who populate TWELVE are seemingly adrift in
New York City. Their parents are notably absent, leaving them with
huge empty apartments and unlimited access to funds. The reader can
only guess why most of these characters feel and act as desperate
as they do (although parental neglect surely plays a part). It is
unclear whether this tale is an indictment of a certain
socioeconomic class in America or of post Generation X teenagers.
Either way, McDonell seems to be saying that threats of destruction
by America's youth, both inwardly and outwardly directed, cannot be
dismissed lightly.

White Mike, the central character, while the most developed, is
still an enigma. Mike never does drugs himself but he has no qualms
about selling them to others. Quietly rebellious and subtly poetic,
he remains distant from the fatalistic world he observes (and
contributes to). The death of his cousin, however, propels him into
a scene of unbelievable violence, a scene to which he is
unwittingly linked. Yet it is his distance, fueled by loss, that in
the end gives him the greatest chance of both physical and
emotional survival.

White Mike's intelligence and cynicism will undoubtedly lead to
comparisons with Holden Caulfield, a parallel that is both
inaccurate and unnecessary. McDonell's central figure is both less
original and less developed, and McDonell's story is vastly
different from Salinger's. However, McDonell, too, has created a
character at once frustrating and sympathetic: a young man
challenging himself by challenging the system he finds himself a
part of yet finds hypocritical and damaging. And like Salinger,
McDonell never fully discloses the intellectual potential or the
emotional damage of his protagonist.

The vulnerabilities of McDonell's characters are apparent, but the
source of these vulnerabilities is not. Just as the parents are
absent, so is the history of each character. We do learn something
about White Mike. We learn the loss he suffers with his mother's
death, his frustration with his education, the distance between him
and his father, and his loyalty to the few people he deems worthy.
About the other characters, we know only that they are handsome and
beautiful and privileged, but we do not know why they kill or why
they begin taking the intense, eponymous drug "twelve." Perhaps
this lack of disclosure is intentional on McDonell's part. More
likely, it is the sign of a young and inexperienced writer.

TWELVE is a frightening tale of trauma and emptiness written with
an impressive sharpness and ferocity. Only 17 when he wrote this
brisk but powerful novel, Nick McDonell is off to a great start to
what promises to be a successful and interesting literary
career.