Also this issue: 25 Alive Bushfire Theatre gears up for its silver anniversary -- again. -Steve Cohen Strange New World -Susan Hagen Roughing It -Toby Zinman Rock Out -Toby Zinman Philling the Gaps Two new histories of the ballclub of brotherly love. -Andrew Milner

July 18-24, 2002

artpicks

Dirty Dozen

In the wealthy Manhattan world of Nick McDonell's debut novel, Twelve, leaving teenagers home alone is more than just risky business. When two wealthy teenagers throw a New Year's party at their Upper East Side townhouse, the usual experimentation with drugs, alcohol and sex turns violent, Columbine-style.

McDonell's hero is White Mike, a straight-edge drug dealer who has never smoked a cigarette or lit a blunt. He doesn't even need the money -- he's drifted into dealing out of economic demand and personal inertia. White Mike is a likable, flawed hero, and Twelve is a shockingly good read. Most moving is McDonell's treatment of the role of drugs in today's society, like the common (mis)perception among teenagers (and adults) that addiction is the most severe consequence of recreational drug use.

What's scarier: McDonell is only 18, and the product of exactly the money-soaked, bourgeois bohemian, prep-school society he so accurately skewers. The violence, decadence and self-indulgence he portrays seem uncomfortably close to reality.

Nick McDonell reads from Twelve, Wed., July 24, 7 p.m., Borders, 1727 Walnut St., 215-568-7400.

—Meredith Broussard