Twelve
A Novel
by Nick McDonell

List Price: $12.00
Pages: 256
Format: Paperback
ISBN: 0802140122
Publisher: Grove Press

Twelve is a chilling chronicle of urban adolescence that already has created an international sensation. Set in Manhattan between Christmas and New Year's Eve, it is the story of White Mike, a seventeen-year-old prep-school dropout turned drug dealer, and his privileged peers who celebrate the holiday in multimillion-dollar co-ops and town houses, partying with drugs, sex, and escalating violence. The generation depicted in Twelve has grown up before its time, with absentee parents who dispense cash in lieu of love, affection, and guidance. To fill in the emotional void, White Mike and his friends prowl for something more exotic, and more dangerous. Hence, a quest for the new designer drug, twelve, which takes this privileged group to the housing projects of Harlem and an encounter with an equally disenfranchised group of teens who set in motion a chain of violence that rapidly spins out of control. From page one, the seventeen-year-old author, whose clarity and skill far exceed his years, sets an icy pace toward an apocalyptic climax.

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1. The book opens with a description of White Mike: "White Mike is thin and pale like smoke"  (p. 3). White Mike is a drug dealer who doesn't use drugs. How does this set up the book?

2. This novel is set on the Upper East Side of New York City. Do you think that the setting is inherent to the story? Could the events in this novel be translated to other parts of the country? Los Angeles? Atlanta? Kansas City?

3. One of the main themes of this book is the impact of drugs on youth culture. Is that message an anti-drug one? Or does the book, in a sense, glorify the youth drug culture and those who participate in it?

4. How does the youth culture described in Twelve differ from the youth culture that Jim Carroll described in The Basketball Diaries? Or that Bret Easton Ellis brought to life in Less Than Zero?

5. The novel offers a unique look at race relations among teenagers. This is most graphically depicted in the scene at the Rec (p. 8). How does the interaction between black and white kids differ from your preconceptions? Or is what happens between the two groups what you have been led to expect?

6. The socioeconomic variables among the different teens at the school are not played up. All the characters assume that everyone else is upper middle class to upper class with extremely wealthy parents—just like themselves. Is this a commentary on how money affects even the children? What is McDonell saying about those effects?

7. White Mike remembers that he was once told he was in an "existential crisis" and that he should read Albert Camus's The Plague (p. 92). How does the existential philosophy affect White Mike's decisions later in the story? Or does he reject this judgment?

8. What do the actions Jessica goes through to procure the drug twelve say about the dehumanizing affects of drugs on youth (pp. 107, 224)?

9. If they felt that their parents would listen, what do you think these kids would tell them?

10. How is this generation alike and different from those that preceded it? Think here about the sixties. Are these the same issues, or are these more exacerbated?

11. Was it possible for this story to have ended another way? Or was the violent path written right from the beginning?

12. It is possible to arrest this kind of behavior in future generations? What needs to be done to make this happen?

13. Is there anything enviable about White Mike and his world? Reading this, do you feel you would want to live in his world?

14. The climax of the story—with White Mike confronting Lionel, Lionel pulling Charlie's gun, and Claude pulling the trigger of the Uzi—all comes in the short span of two pages (pp. 237-239). Why do you think McDonell punches such an emotional whallop into such a short space?

15. Has White Mike changed over the course of the story? Is he a different character from when he appeared "thin and pale like smoke" to when he decides "it was okay" to smoke in Paris (p. 244)? What changes can you perceive in him?

SUGGESTED FURTHER READING

Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger; City of Night by John Rechy; Pure by Rebbecca Ray; Bongwater by Michael Hornburg; Black Snow by Liu Heng; Jack Frusciante Has Left the Band by Enrico Brizzi; By the Shore by Galaxy Craze; Downers Grove by Michael Hornburg; Fat Bald Jeff by Leslie Stella; Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs; Prague by Arthur Phillips; Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis; The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold; The Rules of Attraction by Bret Easton Ellis; Jesus' Son by Denis Johnson; Scar Vegas and Other Stories by Tom Paine; Sarah by J. T. Leroy; Try by Dennis Cooper; Brave New Girl by Louisa Luna; The Fuck-Up by Arthur Nersesian; The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky

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"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. . . . He gives us a palpable sense of the privileged but spiritually desolate world that his characters inhabit."

—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Twelve . . . delivers a satirical, even playful portrait of a world that is perilous but essentially humane. . . . [McDonell] renders Manhattan's cosseted Upper East Side with both the casual authority of an insider and the wry distance of an observer. . . . He maintains a teasing affection for the absurdities of adolescence—an impressive feat of synthesis."

—Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review

"Like Bret Easton Ellis's first novel, Less Than Zero, it is a report on the secret lives of certain privileged young Americans that is likely to shock some (if not all) of their oblivious parents. . . . It will command attention. . . . [McDonell] employs a prose style that affects pithiness and punch—a bit of Hemingway here, a bit of Hammett there, short paragraphs and terse dialogue—and that contains, beneath the tough-guy veneer, a soft inner core of sentimentality."

—Jonathan Yardley, The Washington Post

"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

"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. I'm afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine."

—Hunter S. Thompson

"Twelve has a mentorless feel, like something that percolated from his experiences and came out fresh."

—Los Angeles Times

"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

"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

"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 Manhattan's big fish."

—Joe Heim, People

"Written with an exquisite eye for detail and character development. . . . A worthy page turner."

—Deborah Schoeneman, New York Post