Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

Starred review from October 1, 2004
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

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2004
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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2005
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.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)

January 1, 2005
Seventeen-year-old Steve Nugents therapist-ordered autobiography describes his stay in a home for suicidal teens and records the events that led to his committalhis mothers death from cancer, his brothers subsequent suicide, his dads depression, and his own out-of-control behavior. Brutality mingles with moments of beauty in this horrific catalog of wounds and loss, related in Steves poetic language.

(Copyright 2005 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)