YA New York

Want to hear something gross? Of course you do. So there’s this book Gentlemen, which has been sitting next to my bathtub for … quite awhile now. I’ve read it three or four times, (generally in the tub) and I was planning to do something big when I reviewed it.

Problem: I just picked it up and it seems that it’s died a tragic death. I mean, it’s no longer in readable condition. At all. Which, to be honest, is a good indicator that I liked it a lot.

Gentlemen is Michael Northrop’s debut YA novel, and it’s so awesome that it actually made me consider reading Crime and Punishment, that great opus by Fyodor Dostoevsky. And I’ve never been big on … you know. Hard-to-read classic literature.

No one but no one can make me read Dostoevsky. Except maybe Michael Northrop, it would seem.

Right. So about this book, already. Our protag, Mike, is one of the dunces of his class. This is sort of refreshing. We don’t generally get books about boys at all. Boys who are dunces, maybe even kind of unsavory? Inconceivable.

Mike and his friends are reading Crime and Punishment in their English class when suddenly they begin to suspect that their teacher has … well … lived out the scenario in the novel they’re studying. This gets Mike to actually read Crime and Punishment, but it also gets him and his friends into a heap of trouble. With crime, you know. And punishment.

Honestly? Michael’s book is refreshing. It’s different. Granted, it’s yet another (another!) bit of YA fiction that encourages us to tackle the big bad scary books. But it does it so well that I can’t help forgiving Michael. Also? I think maybe it’s time I went out and bought some Dostoevsky.

And I should probably clean up that pile of books next to my tub.

PS. Who are we kidding? That pile of books will never shrink.