Youth In Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp / by C. Douglas Payne

Nick Twisp is quite a character. At 14, he's one of the few intellectuals among his small circle of vapid family and friends living in Oakland ("a large torpid city across the bay from San Francisco"). Thoroughly misunderstood by his mother, always more wrapped up in her steady stream of cretin boyfriends; neglected by his father, who frequently shuns Nick's allowance (a.k.a. child support payments) in favor of his own life in the fast lane; and ignored by most everyone else, Nick turns to his diary for solace. Recording his daily meanderings in vivid detail, he opens up about his cultural observations, philosophical convictions, problems with authority, acne dilemma, impression of public institutions and waining libido status. It's an oppressive, though not uncommon adolescent life.

.

It is, at least, until Nick meets Sheeni Saunders, his dream girl and soulmate while on vacation with his mom and her current trucker boyfriend Jerry ("who's ultimate ambition is to go on permanent state disability"). After some romantic and intellectual sparring, Nick and Sheeni fall passionately in love. Ultimately they plan to live in Paris where they foresee a life spent in cafés along the Seine, conversing with other prominent existential philosophers of the day and looking down their noses at the simpletons of the world. It's a dream Nick is willing to do anything to see happen. Only now he'll have to navigate he and Sheeni's budding romance around their bumbling adult counterparts who, though woefully ill-equipped for their tasks as parents, are still in charge. Nothing short of an all out revolution, Nick feels, is called for.

.

Always watch the movie before you read the book. Or else one without the other. Payne's 1993 Youth In Revolt is that type of novel, one so infused with urbanity, dry wit, campy style and black humor, you just can't recreate the same appeal through alternate mediums. It's a book altogether marked by a distinctly rhythmic flair. Nick's ramblings play out in an almost poetical way, marked by humor and alternating nervous impulses. Doubtless an intentional nuance of the author's was a satirical style mirroring eclectic new wave French films like Godard's Breathless or Truffaut's Day for Night, Payne careful to leave in just enough aesthetic sensibility so the story's neither too vague nor overblown yet always fresh and spontaneous. (FIC PAYNE)

An Amateur Marriage / by Anne Tyler

Despite a naturally shy demeanor and general disinterest towards media & publicity attention, American author Anne Tyler is still recognized as one of the country's most prolific writers, having won a Pulitzer for her novel Breathing Lessons (1989) and a Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist (1985). An Amateur Marriage (2004) is a lighthearted but telling account of a marriage which is, frankly, just as the title describes it.

It's post-Pearl Harbor 1941 and patriotism runs high throughout the country, perhaps nowhere more fervent than in the Baltimore where eager young men march through the streets on their way to war. Yet 18-year-old Michael Anton feels reluctant to enlist, not wanting to leave his recently widowed mother alone to run their neighborhood grocery, especially for a dangerous and perhaps fatal stint as a soldier. These inhibitions are overruled the moment he sets his sights on Pauline Barclay for whom Michael feels that any life lived out of her favor would be hopelessly unworthy. Consequently, the younger and girlishly romantic Pauline can't help her feelings for Michael and a hasty engagement is swiftly set in motion just as Michael heads off to boot camp.

Following Michael's medical discharge the young but amorous pair are married and promptly settle into domestic life in the apartment above the family store. But Pauline's more cosmopolitan ambitions and restless temperament simply won't allow such an arrangement, especially once the couple's three children--Lindy, George and Karen--start arriving. Within years following their marriage and despite Michael's more conservative viewpoint, the family relocates to a home in the suburbs where even upon arrival, Pauline's well-vocalized yearning for more desirous prospects becomes a constant barrage in Michael's ear. Arguments and frequent bickering are commonplace in the Anton household, the couple's routine fallouts over anything and everything overriding their few happy moments. While fond and loving of their three kids the pair are, at best, less than adequate parents, consistently erring on matters of discipline and ultimately unable to prevent their eldest, Lindy, from running away at 17. Neither can Michael or Pauline prevent their marriage from its inevitable collapse as, after 25 years of their steadily decaying relationship, things dissolve in divorce.

Tyler is a sentimentalist but her characterization of two halves of a doomed union rings of genuine authenticity. Michael and Pauline aren't bad, they're just ordinary flawed individuals trying and failing to manifest any joy or prosperity in matrimony. The author's subtly clever about how she goes about it all. The mood is very "light" with divisiveness arising from mild personal dissatisfactions rather than ill-wrought grudges or resentment--more the Ropers from "Three's Company" than Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Yet this doesn't dissuade from any realism or validity. Michael and Pauline are very much your archetypal 'normal' people living in mid-century middle America where any biased distinction of class, race, generation or upbringing can't be chalked up as a reason for the marriage's failure. The Antons fall short because they very evidently lack the tools to make it work. (FIC TYLER)

Tenderness / by Robert Cormier

Every soul needs tenderness. Something still haunting Lori Cranston as she flees yet another of her mom's abusive boyfriends. Her desire for emotional intimacy now targets Eric Poole, with whom she shares a strange history. Eric needs tenderness also; even with no capacity for feeling. Incarcerated five years for slaying his parents, he's free to pursue the 'tenderness' he's been deprived of so long. But Detective Proctor knows (even if no one else does) that Eric is a monster, that his parents weren't his only victims, and it's only a matter of time before the next.

Chocolate War author Cormier sticks to his New England roots in this psychological thriller about two people linked by a twisted consciousness and a third monitoring their every move. The real clutch of this book is intuition, an awareness of each character's contribution to the story and the motives which propel their actions. Nowhere is this better seen than the author's despiction of Eric, a most unlikely teenage sociopath. (YP FIC CORMIER)