The book that kept me up too late all week and almost made me miss my lightrail stop was the recent novel Ten Thousand Saints by Eleanor Henderson. It's her first novel, and wow... Really beautifully written but fast-moving. Lots of little but building conflicts and secrets, some real suspense, despite being a small picture literary novel. The main protagonist is a teenage stoner boy with ADD, or maybe FAS, stuck in smalltown Vermont with his pot dealing dad and pipe blowing artist mom. He gets hooked into the NYC straight edge scene of the late 80s, and the homoerotic side of its aggro homophobia and gender exclusionism is explored heavily.
A welcome development, cos that scene was so... heavy with angst and denial. The politics of AIDS in late 80s NYC and the Tompkins Square riots figure in, but the small town seediness under the bucolic facade is the real well-captured highlight here, IMO.
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