Teenager A novel

Review by Booklist Review

Teenagers Kody and Teal have both already endured a lifetime of hardship. Kody, a child of the foster-care system, suffers from seizures following a traumatic brain injury. Teal, Kody's girlfriend, lives in constant fear of her father's abuse since her older brother moved out of the house. Kody is incarcerated for making a bomb threat at school. One night, he breaks free from his juvenile detention and heads straight for Teal. They manage to (violently) escape Teal's parents, and together they embark upon a life on the run. The young fugitives flee their native New Jersey, evade the police, swindle countless unsuspecting strangers, and even successfully hold up a pharmacy so Kody can procure antiseizure medication. They are wildly skilled criminals; their journey toward the vast expanse of the West is marked by incredible beginner's luck and an extraordinary amount of violence. Occasional drawings by Rae Buleri illustrate this novel from poet and memoirist Smith, which is hard to put down thanks to Bonnie and Clyde--caliber action and fascinating explorations of two deeply struggling young minds.

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Smith's vibrant and violent debut novel (after the collection Double Bird) captures the pain, ebullience, and illusions of a troubled young man's adolescence. Kody Green, 17, raised in New Jersey foster care, has a wild imagination and dreams of becoming a cowboy. He also has seizures and delusions from a skull injury caused by one of his foster mom's boyfriends. The best part of his life is his girlfriend Tella Carticelli, though her sexually abusive father has recently forced her to have an abortion after Kody got her pregnant. After learning Tella's parents are sending her to Rome to break up their relationship, Kody murders them and the couple flees. Driving west in a series of stolen cars, they try to get pregnant again, visit Graceland (it's disappointingly small), descend into the Grand Canyon, and dodge a series of dim-witted cops. After Kody invents false identities to land them jobs at a Montana ranch, their experience doesn't quite match his visions of the West. Meanwhile, Tella's older brother Neil goes AWOL from the Navy to search for her. Though a muddled resolution disappoints, there are plenty of mythic motifs and pithy insights ("Kody thought they looked like any average family did, absolutely unhinged"), and the author evokes the surreal contrasts of the American landscape in smart, jittery prose. Smith makes this a trip worth taking. (May)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

Two New Jersey teens go on the run across America in this debut novel. Kody Rawlee Green loves Tella "Teal" Carticelli. Unfortunately, he's in juvenile detention and she's about to get on a plane to Rome in her parents' last-ditch attempt to split them apart. When Kody finds out, he breaks out of juvie, rushes to her home, and whisks her away--after shooting her parents--to a new life on the run. With the police and Teal's brother, Neil, on their heels, the two take a whirlwind journey through a mythic America, from Graceland to the wilds of Montana to the beaches of Los Angeles. It's only a matter of time until the world catches up to them, but until that happens, they're the Bonnie and Clyde of the 21st century. Smith has mixed violence with fable to create this modern-day tall tale about two teens who love each other and say to hell with everything else. Each small chapter is akin to a section from The Odyssey or Don Quixote, snapshots that could stand alone but merge together to create a greater story. The tale is told from the perspective of Kody, an unreliable observer who sees everything as heroically and romantically as possible while Teal vacillates between being aware of the real world around them and falling back into Kody's fantasy. It's easy for the reader to be pulled into Kody's imagination along with Teal until a surprising moment of violence or sudden injury sends you back to reality. The juxtaposition of the teens' actions versus their thoughts (Teal dreams of having a family in jail once they're caught, children and grandchildren raised behind bars) emphasizes their youth and disconnection. A new American folktale with teeth. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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I seen this documentary on TV where the boyfriend gets mad and shoots everybody. Ten him and his girl were all alone and able to be in love. Tat was just the best thing I ever did see on television. Really liked that. It reminded me of a comic book that was in the drugstore, where almost the same thing happened. Only there hadn't been any guns involved so there was more, so-called honor about it all. You had the poor girl, held against her will, by a whole bloodline of holier than though assholes, and not able to be free, and then you had the guy with the impossible odds, storming in with a rose in the shape of a slaughter. Sound familiar? If it does, please tell me how it ended. I didn't get to see the fnal page of that comic. Te clerk came around the corner screaming at me and I didn't have $3 for the lousy thing, so I just put it back on the rack, left the store and without learning the end. Tink in that comic, the protagonist had used a magic sword to butcher all his enemies keeping him from his sweetheart. But damn, that's worse when you think about it. Magic or not. Because when you have to kill all these people with a goddamn sword you have to get real close to them and you have to feel the heat from their bodies and you might even have to look them in the eye! Not to say I didn't, or wouldn't look, or couldn't look somebody in the eye. 'Cause I can, and did. But this was real life, and where the hell would I get a sword? Tere's songs too about this very subject matter. See, it's like this: A pines for B--but lo and behold--C and D and E and F and G and H and I, well you get the picture, all those other representative letters in the big bad alphabet want to stand between A and B. So A has to do something. Has to. Even if B through Z doesn't like it. And usually these songs end very tragically. And love doesn't get a proper shot at overcoming that frst bloody aftermath. But . . . life just rumbles on, and troubles just pile up, and beauty just gets shinier and shinier in your eyes until you can't see or believe to see much of anything else, besides the face of the one you care most about in this hard hard world. Excerpted from Teenager by Bud Smith All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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