Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson

This is the story of what can happen to the teenage offspring of flower children who never gave up being hippies. When the parents are free spirits, making a living from the drug trade, getting high, and practicing free love, how in the world can a teenager rebel? One option, the one these characters choose, is to become straight edge--swearing off alcohol, tobacco, drugs, sex, and sometimes even meat--and embracing the hardcore punk scene, with its mosh pits and barely contained violence.

Actually, the only straight edge punk I ever personally knew came from just such a background, so I know it can happen, as unlikely as it seems.

The time is the late '80s and most of the events take place in the seedier parts of New York City. Three teenagers become bound together by the death through a drug overdose of a 16-year-old boy. The dead boy's best friend, the boy's half brother, and the girl pregnant with the boy's baby through a one-time encounter come together to form a household of sorts, to protect the unborn child and perhaps assuage their guilt, as each one feels some responsibility for the boy's death. With little guidance from the adults in their lives, they attempt to "do the right thing," all the while trying to understand their own feelings and their emerging sexuality. But they are just kids, and they are all confused.

This novel was rated by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best of 2011, so I was very disappointed to find that it left me cold. The premise had so much potential, and the plot, while a bit contrived, was interesting. But the presentation seemed like only the reporting of events and what people said and did--this happened, and then this happened, and then she said, and then he said, and so forth. At no time did I feel that I really knew the characters. So I did not really care about what happened to them all that much.

And the whole straight edge world, which is treated almost as a fourth major character, is strangely flat. We are told about mosh pits, where young men are often injured and where fights frequently begin, but we are never put in the middle of one. We are told that the music is fast and something about the message of the lyrics, but we are never put inside the music to understand why it is loved and what emotions it engenders. The author has obviously done a great deal of research and drops many names about the hardcore music scene in New York City, but I did not for a minute believe that she had lived it.

This is Eleanor Henderson's first novel, and she shows a great deal of promise, in my opinion, particularly a talent for original descriptive bits. I just hope she will learn to get inside her characters and her setting.

"Oh, yea," you are saying to yourself, "Raye knows more than the New York Times. How arrogant." You may be right.