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Type of bind: Paperback
EAN num: 9780763633653
ISBN number: 0763633658
Label: Candlewick
Manufacturer: Candlewick
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: May 08, 2007
Publishing house: Candlewick
Age index: Young Adult
Release Date: May 08, 2007
Sale Popularity Level: 622575
Studio: Candlewick
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'Steve Nugent is a character as distinctive and disturbing as Salinger’s Holden Caulfield.' — BOOKLIST (starred review)
Steve Nugent is in Burnstone Grove, a facility for kids who are either addicts or have tried to commit suicide. But Steve doesn’t fit in either group, and he used to go to the gifted school. So why is he in Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, Steve tries to figure out who he is by examining who he was. Both heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this brutal story of escape and the desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp.
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Rated by buyers 
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This book is not for the squeamish. It's a heartbreakingly beautiful story told from the point of view of a 19-year-old boy who is in a home for kids who are drug addicts and/or have tried to commit suicide. It is the "journal" he is asked to keep that forms the novel. It is devastating in its honesty. The point of view is extraordinary, both raw and lyric. The narrator has an intensely personal sense of humour and of the absurd. As tragic as the novel is, it is also very, very funny. I think this is one of the best and most intelligent novels I have read in a long time. It is certainly one I will never forget.
Rated by buyers -
This is the greatest book I have ever read. It has honestly changed the way I look at life.
Rated by buyers -
This book is written perfectly. I love all of Adam Rapp's novels and this is deffinately one of his best works. I recommend to it to anyone who is looking for a unique style of writing and beautifully unfolding plot.
Rated by buyers -
Usually, I hate it when people compare books to Catcher in the Rye, but here it's obviously deserved--not only because you can see the parallels between Holden and Steve's journeys with your eyes closed, but because, like Catcher, this book is amazing. It's a trainwreck that's great because it's so painful and real (and sometimes funny), and by the end I really didn't care that it was a Catcher ripoff, because it's just so good.
Rated by buyers -
Ignore the fact that others have already mentioned this, and let me be the very first to compare Adam Rapp's novel UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG to J.D. Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE. Of course, their characters Steve Nugent and Holden Caulfield are different, but they're alike in the way HoHo's know they're related to Ding Dongs.
Critics have called Steve names like "marginalized" and "outcast," but if that's Steve, then that's Holden as well. Which it's not. I'd like to see those critics try to deal with the death of their mother, finally watching cancer finish its job in her upstairs bedroom. I want to see them overcome a group of delinquent friends trying to deal drugs and rob the Piggly Wiggly market. I want to see them discover their brother hanging by a necktie down in the basement. How would they handle it and would that make them "marginalized"?
Here's the thing -- Steve is just a Gray Grouper at Burnstone Grove filling his journal with the past to hopefully make sense of the present. He's in love with Silent Starla, a Blue Grouper who isn't silent like everyone says. He's just a sixteen year old trying to recover from a life where "you have to deal with stuff on your own and that's all there is to it." It's this search that leads him to contemplate the universe and drugs, religion and the purpose of life, and "that particular part of the morning `between the wolf and the dog' when the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can't tell what's what."
That's where Steve is. It's the reason he's at Burnstone Grove instead of the Gifted School he ran away from. And it's the reason the unique voice in his mind will howl in your brain, bringing you to laughter, and God help you, tears.
Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens
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