Nick McDonell's first novel (written, in case you haven't read a newspaper recently, when he was 17) is set on Manhattan's Upper East Side, and focuses on a group of teenagers from that neighbourhood. With a couple of exceptions, the characters in the novel are immensely privileged: they attend - or have attended - boarding schools; they live in luxurious apartments belonging to their (often absent) parents; and they are used to being looked after by maids. At the same time, many of them attempt to connect themselves to less privileged existences: they shop-lift, deal drugs, fantasise about - and in some cases own - guns. Most of the time, the harm this causes is limited and trivial - they merely end up looking ridiculous. But it has some wider and genuinely alarming consequences.

LRB 5 September 2002 | PDF Download