Sold to fourteen publishers around the world and receiving tremendous critical acclaim, Twelve was one of the most significant literary debuts of 2002. It quickly established its seventeen-year-old author as an astonishing voice of the new millennium. A chilling novel of urban adolescence that is "both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness" (Joe Heim, People), it has appeared on The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, London Times, and Sydney Morning Herald best-seller lists, and on The New York Times extended list. Set among the privileged prep-school students of Manhattan's Upper East Side, Twelve follows White Mike, a dropout drug dealer, through the week between Christmas and New Year's. Throughout the book, where there is an excess of everything but hope, we are filled with that very emotion as White Mike struggles for nothing less than his soul.
Industry Reviews
Twelve is "a beautifully tragic and unsettling story ... a reminder of how engrossing a character-driven novel can, and should, be" "As fast as speed, as relentless as acid." --Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "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
"An astonishing rush of a first novel, all heat and ice and inexorable narrative drive...A pleasure to read, a horror to contemplate, a real achievement." -Joan Didion
"McDonell is an authentic talent...His novel will endure as a snapshot of his generation as surely as Less Than Zero did of the eighties." -Stephanie Merritt, The Observer (London)
"[McDonell] renders Manhattan's cosseted Upper East Side with both the casual authority of an insider and the wry distance of an observer....Impressive." -Jennifer Egan, The New York Times Book Review
"McDonell, like the young Jim Caroll, displays a frightening acuity in his astonishing debut." -Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair As fast as speed, as relentless as acid. Michiko Kakutani, "The New York Times"
"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
An astonishing rush of a first novel, all heat and ice and inexorable narrative driveA pleasure to read, a horror to contemplate, a real achievement. Joan Didion
McDonell is an authentic talentHis novel will endure as a snapshot of his generation as surely as "Less Than Zero" did of the eighties. Stephanie Merritt, "The Observer" (London)
[McDonell] renders Manhattan s cosseted Upper East Side with both the casual authority of an insider and the wry distance of an observer.Impressive. Jennifer Egan, " The New York Times Book Review"
McDonell, like the young Jim Caroll, displays a frightening acuity in his astonishing debut. Elissa Schappell, "Vanity Fair"
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