| Depression |
| Family |
| Social Themes |
| Suicide |
| Young Adult Fiction |
| Siblings |
Summary
Summary
Alternately heartbreaking and starkly humorous, this teenager's brutal story of escape and desire for redemption is masterfully told by award-winning writer and film director Adam Rapp.
I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids.
Steve Nugent is in a facility called Burnstone Grove. It's a place for kids who are addicts, like Shannon Lynch, who can stick $1.87 in change up his nose, or for kids who have tried to commit suicide, like Silent Starla, whom Steve is getting a crush on. But Steve doesn't really fit in either group. He used to go to a gifted school. So why is he being held at Burnstone Grove? Keeping a journal, in which he recalls his confused and violent past, Steve is left to figure out who he is by examining who he was.
Author Notes
Adam Rapp is the acclaimed author of Punkzilla , a Michael L. Printz Honor Book; Under the Wolf, Under the Dog , a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist and winner of the Schneider Family Book Award; and 33 Snowfish , an American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults. He is also an accomplished playwright, a writer for Season Three of the HBO series In Treatment , and a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Drama in 2007. Adam Rapp lives in New York City.
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Dealing with his mother's death, brother's suicide and father's depression, 16-year-old Steve finds himself at Burnstone Grove, a facility for kids with substance abuse problems or suicidal tendencies. Keeping a journal to pass the time and help sort out his own thoughts, Steve slowly learns to regain control over his life. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(High School) In typical adolescent understatement, seventeen-year-old Steve Nugent titles his therapist-ordered autobiography ""A Pretty Depressing Time in My Life."" It describes his stay at Burnstone Grove, a home for suicidal or drug-addicted teens, and records the events that led to his committal, including his mother's death from cancer, his brother's suicide a few weeks later, his father's depression, and his own out-of-control behavior. Steve's unassuming, prepossessing narrative settles for a tone of neutral objectivity as he observes his downward spiral: on a Robitussin-fueled bender, he kicks in seventeen TV screens in his father's shop, then, with glass shards still embedded in his leg, breaks into the house of a girl he likes, has a bowl of cereal, and steals a plate for his mother. On his return home he's told his mother has died; later, his increasingly erratic father finds him shaving his head and, in an irrational, primal moment, chokes him nearly to death. These time-compacted events are only a few episodes in the horrific catalog of wounds and loss related in Steve's poetic language, interspersed with more redemptive scenes from Burnstone Grove. Descriptions and characterizations are vivid with images yet still credibly adolescent; brutality mingles with moments of beauty: ""it started raining and all the pedestrians pulled out umbrellas and they sort of bloomed like these giant flowers."" There's no anger in Steve's voice, and hardly any grief, just bemusement at his own unpredictable actions, which readers will recognize as cries for help. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Gr. 10-12. Steve Nugent is a character as distinctive and disturbing as Salinger's Holden Caulfield was 50 years ago. Steve, who is writing from a Michigan facility for troubled teens, chronicles both the events leading up to his hospitalization and his interactions with fellow patients, the Blue Groupers (suicidal teens) and the Red Groupers (addicts), as a part of his counseling. Rapp effectively uses canine references (and some scatology) to illustrate Steve's loss of control as he struggles to find a place in the pack after his mother's death and his brother's suicide. Opening pages paint a horrific picture of Steve's older brother's death, but as the novel cycles through to a final coda of this same scene, shock turns to deep regret for all that Steve has lost, and readers will come away with a fervent hope that Steve's opening journal entry will come true: By the time anyone reads this, hopefully I'll be out of this place and on to better things. Like last year's 33 Snowfish, this is not for timid readers or those easily offended or shocked by rough language or graphic descriptions, but teens will root from their hearts and even laugh a little as Steve struggles to fight his way out from under the dog of depression that has him pinned down. --Cindy Dobrez Copyright 2004 Booklist
School Library Journal Review
Gr 10 Up-Sixteen-year-old Steve Nugent recounts the events that brought him to Burnstone Grove, a therapeutic facility for teens with substance abuse issues and/or suicidal tendencies. Intellectually bright, emotionally immature, and only moderately adept socially, Steve is coping with his mother's death, his older brother's suicide, his father's depression, and his own erratic behavior. With customary fluency when dredging these psychosocial swamps, Rapp creates a likable character leading an existence so grim that his crimes seem understandable. Steve has a better sense of humor than the antiheroes of Rapp's Little Chicago (Front St., 2002) and 33 Snowfish (Candlewick, 2003), perhaps because his life went awry a bit later than theirs. Steve is credible both as the awkward and intoxicated teen who doesn't deal appropriately with the brush off he gets from a popular girl and as the understanding friend who remains open-minded upon learning that a boy he admires is both gay and manipulative. The author explicitly describes the violence his protagonist experiences: when Steve finds his brother's body, there is an anatomically detailed description of how strangulation looks. However, while Steve's prehospitalization life clearly was spiraling out of control, he now seems to be truly on the mend, and the story's denouement finds him on the verge of reestablishing contact with his father. Rapp offers teens well-constructed peepholes into harsh circumstances, with a bit of hope tinting the view.-Francisca Goldsmith, Berkeley Public Library, CA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Like so many teen protagonists, Steve Nugent is struggling with his mother's death from cancer. His journal looks back on that death and, shortly thereafter, his brother's suicide. Now living at a center for troubled teens, the 16-year-old occasionally focuses on his life there, like the scene where he gratefully loses his virginity, but he mainly describes in painful, if well-crafted, detail his bleak earlier existence, which he perceives as a grungy world smelling like vomit and urine, full of people with bad teeth and bad breath. In a deteriorating mental state, Steve himself urinates in public, in his pants, and on his father's bed; drops acid; and befriends a ten-year-old girl, smoking cigarettes with her and abandoning her on a cross-country bus ride. A certain grim humor sometimes relieves the heavy narrative, which does end with a gleam of hope for readers who have stuck with the long, disturbing story. (Fiction. YA) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
What does it take to push a smart kid over the edge? Steve Nugent now lives at Burnstone Grove with the other "Groupers." He is a Gray Grouper, as opposed to the Red Groupers (the junkies) or the Blue Groupers (who have attempted suicide). Gray Groupers belong to neither group, and, at the start of Rapp's brutal novel, Steve does not know where he fits in or how to move on with his life. The death of his mother and his brother's suicide have left him rudderless, until he tells us the story of how he landed at the facility. Why It Is for Us: Gentle readers should avoid Rapp's books altogether. Here, he begins with a stark depiction of the social order in a mental hospital and, layer by layer, unearths a family in crisis. Rapp is a playwright, and his gift for realistic dialog is matched by few writers for teens today.-Angelina Benedetti, King Cty. Lib. Syst., WA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
