Product Description

n the wilderness of junior high, Edwin Hanratty is at the bottom of the food chain. His teachers find him a nuisance. His fellow students consider him prey. And although his parents are not oblivious to his troubles, they can't quite bring themselves to fathom the ruthless forces that demoralize him daily.

Sharing in these schoolyard indignities is his only friend, Flake. Branded together as misfits, their fury simmers quietly in the hallways, classrooms, and at home, until an unthinkable idea offers them a spectacular and terrifying release.

From Jim Shepard, one of the most enduring and influential novelists writing today, comes an unflinching look into the heart and soul of adolescence. Tender and horrifying, prescient and moving, Project X will not easily be forgotten.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #506459 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-12
• Released on: 2005-04-12
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 7.95" h x .47" w x 5.15" l, .36 pounds
• Binding: Paperback
• 176 pages

From Publishers Weekly
This engrossing novel gives the overworked subject of Columbine-style school massacres an unusually subtle and affecting treatment. Shepard (Nosferatu; Battling Against Castro; etc.) follows the travails of Edwin Hanratty, a misfit stuck at the bottom of the ruthless eighth-grade pecking order ("It's a big shitpile with everybody shitting downward so you want to be as high as possible"). Beaten up and mocked by bullies, disliked by his teachers and at loggerheads with his exasperated parents, he lives a nightmare of loneliness and anxiety with only his even more isolated friend, Flake, to cling to. Together, the two boys feed each other's wounded, sullen disgruntlement and edge toward vengeance as the only salve for their overwhelming sense of impotence and humiliation. Shepard makes these miserable characters sympathetic and even funny (" `Suck my dog's chew toy, how's that?' he goes. `Your mother's still busy with it,' I tell him"), but avoids easy sociological explanations for their predicament. The two boys, who have only their alienation to cling to, are often snotty and off-putting, and bat away all helping hands; there are also hints of deeper pathologies. With a pitch-perfect feel for the flat, sardonic, "I-go-then-he-goes" language of disaffected teens, Shepard explores how, in two disturbed minds, the normal adolescent obsessions with competence, mastery and status take on disastrous proportions, and the search for social belonging becomes a life-or-death matter.
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From Booklist
Shepard's lean and stinging new novel zeroes in on the conjunction of two troubling facets of American life: the tragic disaffection of middle-class teenage boys and guns in the home. In his unflinchingly accurate yet sharply funny response to the catastrophe in Columbine, Colorado, Shepard introduces the smart and self-hating Edwin, whose first day of eighth grade is an unmitigated disaster--no surprise to him or his even angrier pal, Flake. School is hell, and the adults, determined to be cool, inadvertently stoke the fires. As Edwin and Flake plot their revenge and practice handling Flake's father's guns, which include a Kalashnikov, Shepard neatly and devastatingly explicates teenage alienation and despair. His furiously nihilistic boys do not even watch TV, play video games, or listen to rock and roll. Pain is their pleasure, and soon there will be plenty to go around. Ultimately, Shepard boldly addresses the volatile subject of teen violence with cleansing candor, equanimity, and sympathy. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
“Shepard is masterly at setting up our heartbreak [and] is at his most brilliant in capturing the demented essence of junior high.”–The New York Times Book Review

“An energetic and often wickedly funny story of alienation and revenge.” –Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Shepard obviously has a lock on the new American paranoia, and his voice should be essential reading. . . . Here is the effect of [Shepard's] books: A reader finishes them buzzing with awe, with respect, and yet, with a great deal of worry." –Chicago Tribune

"Jim Shepard brings to his depiction of these lost boys a striking insight and even humor. They're so real, they nearly jump off the page into the nearest schoolyard, which makes it all the more chilling." –The Boston Globe