Gentlemen

by Michael Northrop

Book Overview

Gritty, fast-paced, and brutally real, this debut novel takes an unflinching look at what binds friends together--and what can tear them apart. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0545097495
• ISBN13: 9780545097499
• Release Date: April 2009
• Publisher: Scholastic Press
• Length: 234 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.8" x 8.3"
• Age Range: 14 to 17 years
• Grade Range: Grades 9 to 12

Customer Reviews

Small-Town Horror Meets Classic American Fiction

The thing that dawned on me, reading this novel, is how little a percentage of horror books actually involve capital-H Horror. Stephen King isn't about googly-eyed monsters and crazed psychos -- or, at least, he isn't about that so much as he's about the most basic human reactions. Fear. Anxiety. Loss. Regret. That's what separates, say, "The Catcher in the Rye" from "The Road" -- in other words, a really well-done non-horror story from a really good horror story. And there's a lot of Stephen King in Michael Northrop's book. Actually, it reminded me more of Michael ("The Hours") Cunningham. For much of the book, the main plot moves slowly, but interesting, well-developed and well-savored. Almost every page there's a side story that made me want to tell the person next to me about what I was reading -- like how Tommy threw a desk across the room in order to distract a girl he liked, or the summer of the two Jennys. And Micheal's language (the narrator -- whose name was misspelled on his birth certificate, not the author) is so graceful that when he suddenly becomes "typical guy"-ish and talks about throwing a punch at his teacher, you're blown away. Not because it's out of character, but because it makes him so multi-dimensional and real. Then, of course, there's the scary stuff. And Michael (the author) seems to know his way around both scary stuff and the more Gothic parts of small-town America: the secrets people keep and the way that dark seems to swallow up the country after twilight. As the novel moves on, the simple question of whether or not their teacher has a dead body no longer feels like the point of the book -- it's more about Micheal, his friends, his town, and the darkness that's inside him.

A Well-Crafted, Suspenseful and Chilling Tale!!!

In this extraordinary debut novel, Michael Northrop offers a well-crafted, chilling tale, full of mystery and suspense. Told in the first person, the story nicely balances the narrator's affable, almost innocent, tone with the darker side of human nature. Suitable for teens and adults alike, the story will keep you guessing and on the edge of your seat as it navigates the twists and turns of a friendship thrust into the middle of most peculiar mystery. I highly recommend it!

Three reasons to read Gentlemen

First, I'm a fan of what you might call "the poetic vernacular," over prettified rhetoric, e.g., folks who write like ordinary folks talk but have a since of rhythm and lingo that make their writing memorable -- the likes of Mark Twain and Ring Lardner who can write like uneducated rubes but do it really well. Northrop writes in that vein, too, and I enjoyed the book at linguistic level as Micheal (sic) slangs his way through the story talking exactly like American teenagers talk if they're good at it. Second, the characters are interesting. Not just the kid characters, but the grown-ups, who Northrop manages to flesh out even though Micheal (like I said, sic) barely notices them. For example, his mom is a tragic figure, hard working and self-sacraficing, but she's a bit frayed at the edges and negligent... she surely doesn't know all the things her kid is into. She's real. The teachers are well-drawn, too, especially the enigmatic Mr. Haberman, who's not exactly a hero but certainly not a villain but is more like a not-very-good teacher who wants to be a good teacher because he has big ideas he wants to share with kids, but it's hard because the kids aren't listening and they don't care... so, like a lot of teachers, he experiments a bit but before long lapses back into his comfort zone of pedantry. He's real. Third, the story is a good one. It's probably what actual teenagers are more likely to get into -- an edgy, suspenseful thriller with missing persons and sex and drugs and maybe a murder and definitely an attempted murder and fights and myspace and secrets and mayhem. Oh, and Russian literature. You know how the kids love that. It's a real page turner -- I read it one sitting, and I can't remember the last time I did that with a novel.

excellent teen thriller

A great book for teens. It is a who dun it of the best kind. A group of rebel high school boys, no one pays attention too, teachers no one would doubt, how society treats the poor, and turns a blind eye to those that have problems in school, and how easy it is to place labels on people.

"Having a messed-up eye, it'll affect the way you see things."

It may be only February, but I think it's safe to put Michael Northrop's first novel on my best of '09 list. You can call it YA if you like; the classification doesn't really matter. Like a fastball, a whiskey shot or a perfect pop song, GENTLEMEN is an example of a novel that does everything right. Main character Micheal (his misspelled-since-birth name is one of a hundred ways Northrop uses small detail to make his people pop right off the page) and his pals Tommy, Mixer and Bones are the kids you remember hanging out with in front of the lockers...or endeavoring to avoid. They dip chaw, smoke stale Camels bought off older kids and hang out in the woods after school. Their remedial English teacher Mr. Haberman is a wholly untrustworthy and utterly compelling shadow-figure in their school lives, simultaneously challenging the boys and baiting them with the great literary brickbat of Dostoyevsky's CRIME AND PUNISHMENT. But when one of their own goes missing, Mr. Haberman's increasingly pointed classroom remarks about crime, guilt and consequences launch a chain of events whose final link ends, inevitably, in a pool of blood. There are deep secrets pulsing through GENTLEMEN's veins, but Northrop doesn't spill them, instead allowing them to trickle out through the book's pores as its internal temperature spikes higher. As a psychological portrait, GENTLEMEN evokes the best of Robert Cormier. As a thriller it easily holds its own with the best Lois Duncan mass markets of my own misspent youth. From the first-person I'm-whispering-you-this-on-the-bus narration to the tension that builds steadily throughout the story, Northrop handles every inch of his tale with the off-handed aplomb of a born storyteller, and in the process serves up an instant classic.