Review: Youth in Revolt by C.D. Payne

Title: Youth in Revolt
Author: C.D. Payne
Publisher:  Main Street Books

Age Group: Young Adult

Category: Contemporary

Release date: March 15th, 1996

Pages:  499 (Paperback)

Rating: 5 out of 5

Source: Bought

Youth in Revolt is the journals of Nick Twisp, California's most precocious diarist, whose ongoing struggles to make sense out of high school, deal with his divorced parents, and lose his virginity result in his transformation from an unassuming fourteen-year-old to a modern youth in open revolt. As his family splinters, worlds collide, and the police block all routes out of town, Nick must cope with economic deprivation, homelessness, the gulag of the public schools, a competitive type-A father, murderous canines, and an inconvenient hair trigger on his erectile response–all while vying ardently for the affections of the beauteous Sheeni Saunders, teenage goddess and ultimate intellectual goad.

After asking my boyfriend to review Leviathan by Scott Westerfeld (found here), I decided to ask him to review another one of the books he's read recently.  Thankfully, he agreed, so here's Santi's review of Youth in Revolt.

This book deals with the intricate, uncut, unrated, donut-filled, sex-focused life of the intelligent and Jean-Paul Belmondo-like rebellious teenager, Nick Twisp. A man (you’ll judge if he deserves such title) who unlike many kids his age enjoys Frank Sinatra, who stops at nothing for the love of his life and that, in my opinion, keeps the best damn diary ever written.

The story occurs mostly in California –with an off-site stop in India– and goes from mid-July to January in what has to be the most eventful six months in any teenager’s life. The main characters in the story apart from Nick are Sheeni, the most educated and French-loving girl that’s ever lived, also Nick’s One And Only Love; Leroy, a.k.a. Lefty (for genitalia orientation reasons), Nick’s parents, George and Estelle and many others that enter, leave and accompany –or torment– Nick’s chaotic existence while he tries to cope with love, poverty, virginity, California’s public schools, police prosecution, self-centered progenitors and their relationships and most importantly: extremely malevolent canines.

I found this book to be incredible from start to finish. It’s definitely brilliant! It’s written in a way that’s easy to read, just makes you want to keep going and going, while at the same time contains a lot of big words so you can expand your vocabulary (maybe that’s only for me, since I’m Colombian and my lexis is quite limited). The book is guaranteed to make you laugh, feel sad and anguished for a couple minutes and then laugh again even louder. It’s a complete tear jerker, except they won’t be sad tears.

I recommend this book to everyone that really wants to have a great laugh, enjoy an amazing story and take some notes on how to become an official badass. From me it gets a solid 5 out of 5 (I wanted 6 out of 5 but I don’t know if book reviewing standards allow that). So if you don’t have it, go get it now and read it!

What do you guys think?  Should I make him a regular on the blog?  ;)  Thanks for stopping by.