Book: Fierce People
Author: Dirk Wittenborn
Published: 2002 (Bloomsbury)
Pages: 335
This is the rich, slightly weirder-ass version of The Perks
of Being a Wallflower, which, though I hailed as the most subversive realistic
thing I’d read at fourteen, is actually your fairly standard square-gets-wild
finds-meaning-of-life power-of-weirdo-friends coming of age arc.
And trust me, I feel just as cynical as that sentence
sounds. But! This book adds unique details that ramp up the outsider-ness: this
kid and his sort-of functioning junkie mom get a chance to move out of their
shitty NYC situation into a rich neighborhood when the mom gets a “job” as a
personal masseuse for the dude who owns the place.
Oh yeah, there is plenty of speculation of how exactly his
mom gets (and keeps) this job, but the kid gets wrapped up in neighborhood
society politics by becoming friends with kids from the only two extremes of
class represented (kids from the rich neighborhood families and the domestic
help that waits on them) and falling in lusty, hormonal love with the
patriarch’s granddaughter.
That plus suppressed neighborhood secrets press together and
rub against each other into explosive results that completely dissect the
society’s framework.
Bookshelf. It’s just the right blend of scandalous, growing
up, and satire that’s very well disguised in humanity. Good stuff.
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