American Youth.

LaMarche, Phil (author).

A title this generic suggests that the author is going to paint with a broad brush, but while LaMarche does tackle big issues in his debut—using gun violence as a way into teen alienation, urban-rural conflict, and the nostalgic impulse behind fascism—he does so by painting a deceptively simple picture. In New England, a rural boy shows his gun to two brothers, and one of the brothers accidentally shoots and kills the other. The boy’s terrified mother orders him to keep a terrible secret: he loaded the gun. Ostracized at school, the boy joins a group called American Youth, straight-edgers whose main purpose seems to be vandalizing homes in the area’s new subdivisions. Beset by parents, police, and peers, the boy turns his anger on himself until a violent release seems inevitable. Although some lines of thought could have been explored more fully, LaMarche’s surgically clean prose exposes the full extent of the boy’s pain, and as a portrait of young people trapped in the ruptures of our society, this short novel has great power.