GENTLEMEN

Today my friend, Michael Northrop‘s, debut novel, Gentlemen, officially comes out!

Published by Scholastic, it’s classified as a Young Adult book, which means it’s geared mainly toward a teenage audience.

I have to admit I never read much YA even when I was that age (was too busy reading books like Valley of the Dolls and Peyton Place and thinking I was ooooh so sophisticated — big laugh, of course 🙂 ) Anyway, I have flipped through a few recently to see what’s out there and it seems that many of them are kind of about teenage girls and the whole popularity thing, about fitting in, some more serious and about eating disorders and multicultural issues, etc., but many are about girls and by women authors. So, Michael’s is a bit different in that it focuses on boys from a rather tough, working-class background, and is a bit darker. My kind of book! And one of my favorite novels, Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, is at its center. Honestly, I read it quickly and really really liked it. It should be widely available, as of today. Yay 🙂