Critical Praise

"Written with an exquisite eye for detail and character development. . . . A worthy page turner."

——Deborah Schoeneman, New York Post

"An arresting debut.... [McDonell] knows how to make you keep turning pages. . . . He knows how to establish a mood (completely creepy) that he sustains to the bitter, blood-soaked end."

——Malcolm Jones, Newsweek

"The novel, both an indictment of excess and a cry of teenage loneliness, is briskly paced and snappy, name-checking both Camus and Eminem in its sketches of the nihilistic spawn of Manhattan's big fish."

——Joe Heim, People

"Twelve has a mentorless feel, like something that percolated from his experiences and came out fresh."

——Los Angeles Times

"The artfulness of Twelve is undeniable. The story moves, dips into big issues of race and class, and has great writing that reveals what McDonell calls 'the spiritual debilitation of a generation.'"

——Heidi Benson, San Francisco Chronicle

"Seventeen-year-old Nick McDonell, like the young Jim Carroll, displays a frightening accuity in his astonishing debut, . . . a plunge into the depraved realm of overprivileged, drug-gobbling preppies."

——Elissa Schappell, Vanity Fair

"Nick McDonell is the real thing, a powerful young writer with the look of a dangerous freak and very sharp teeth. The ratio of age to talent is horrifying. His trick is he writes the truth. I'm afraid he will do for his generation what I did for mine."

——Hunter S. Thompson

"As fast as speed, as relentless as acid. . . . Mr. McDonell sketches in these characters with brisk authority, deftly cutting from one subplot to another in quick, cinematic takes. . . . He gives us a palpable sense of the privileged but spiritually desolate world that his characters inhabit."

——Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times