Review by New York Times Review
The ambition of "Ten Thousand Saints," Eleanor Henderson's debut novel about a group of unambitious lost souls, is beautiful. In nearly 400 pages, Henderson does not hold back once: she writes the hell out of every moment, every scene, every perspective, every fleeting impression, every impulse and desire and bit of emotional detritus. She is never ironic or underwhelmed; her preferred mode is fierce, devoted and elegiac. The book follows a group of friends and lovers, parents and children, from 1987 until 2006, winding its way not only through Vermont and New York's East Village, but also through the straight-edge music scene and the early days of the AIDS epidemic. The novel begins on a high school football field in New England and ends 20 years later at one of the last shows at CBGB, just before it closes. If your own life intersected any of these places in any of these years, then you know how to fill in that sentence; and if you were too old or too young to be deeply engaged by that particular stretch of time, you will still recognize what it is to be part of a larger cultural heartbeat during a moment in history when your own heart is beating so fast, so recklessly and so loudly. It is difficult to convey the passionate quality of a scene - the punk scene, the hip-hop scene, the Factory scene, the Viennese Secession and so on; one can summon up the physical details, but the emotional investment, like mercury, often slips away. One ends up shaking one's head, saying, "You had to be there, I guess." By delving as deeply into the lives of her characters as she does, tracing their long relationships not only to one another but also to various substances, Henderson manages to catch something of the bloody, felt intersection of lives and cult bands, of overindulgence and monastic refusal, of the dark, apocalyptic quality of the '80s. She gets extremes, and people who gravitate toward them. If there is sometimes, perhaps, a little too much here, if the volume gets a little high, it's understandable: the writer seems to want to make sure that we can hear the sound she presumably hears so clearly herself. The knot of intimacy at the center of "Ten Thousand Saints" is the friendship between Teddy McNicholas and Jude Keffy-Horn. Teenagers when the book begins, they specialize in petty theft, hanging out and skipping school. They not only smoke pot, they also huff turpentine and, later, Freon from an office building's air-conditioner. They are somewhat worse than bad - they are, one can already see, on their way down to tiny, numb lives in the middle of nowhere. Their parents are similarly ill equipped to deal with life, being themselves old-school stoners who do as little as possible to get by. And then something happens, something unexpected and definitive, that propels Jude out of Vermont and down to New York to live with his father, Les, an East Village pot dealer and a pretty nice guy whose idea of paternal authority is to mandate that his kid can smoke only weed grown by Les. Since Jude, who is adopted, is probably already suffering from the lifelong effects of fetal alcohol syndrome, one does tend to wonder if Les has the sense God gave a piece of lint, but whatever: Henderson is less interested in scolding these spacey parents than in showing what might produce a fervent commitment to a world as rigorous and rule-governed as the straight-edge music scene. Teddy's older brother, Johnny, is a guru in that scene, and he quickly becomes Jude's guru as well, initiating him into a life of no drugs, no sex, no meat, no worldly possessions, and a fanatic devotion to concerts that feature a lot of body-slamming among "shirtless New York hardcore boys" and music played very, very, very loud. (The homoerotic core of hardcore is just one of the fascinating cultural threads Henderson unwinds here.) Johnny, a tattoo artist, is muscular, highly tattooed himself and prone to thoughts like, "A true sannyasi neither hates nor desires." Troubled, lonely, dyslexic, drop-out Jude falls hard for his routine. Among many other things, Henderson is exploring what might cause a conversion experience, and what that conversion might do to a raggedy, overwhelmed, many-seamed, modern family. The difference between the stoned parents and the turpentine-huffing kids who go clean isn't, actually, one of sober versus altered states; it has more to do with those who seek intensity and those who shield themselves from it. Les, who likes to kick back with a full bong and the Times crossword puzzle, can't understand what sends his son slamming between extremes. Of the new, straight-edge Jude, he thinks, "Surely this turbulent little reverend with the military haircut was not Les's flesh and blood." (Which Jude isn't, literally, but the emotion is the same.) YET if straight-edge demands an almost spartan renunciation from its followers, it still can't stand in the way of love, and the antidote to Jude's conversion turns out to be the depth of feeling that develops between him and a one-time fling of Teddy's, Eliza, who finds herself pregnant at 15. Eventually, the characters form a new, makeshift family around this pregnancy, realigning their respective choices and ideas about who they are. It is, inescapably, an old-fashioned narrative solution to the conflicts and rough edges Henderson is exploring: the family can keep the devil of soul-hunger at bay. Well, maybe. I am less convinced by this conversion than by the others, which more intuitively trade one sort of intensity for another. The novel also stumbles in places with its overintense descriptions of everything in sight - the interior design of a Japanese restaurant, the provenance of a Dodge A100 van, the history of the Champlain Recreation Center going back to the French and Indian War - and with a suspiciously 11th-hour rescue by a previously little-seen character. When the entire company moved back to Vermont to start a band, I got a little road-weary. The dial might go to 11, but keeping it there for 400 pages can be tough on even the most sympathetic reader. But if these are flaws, they are the flaws of not knowing quite when to stop, of never wanting to stop, of being able to play all night, of, no, wait, you just have to hear this one. As flaws go, I'll take them. These kids embrace a life of no drugs, no sex, no meat and a devotion to concerts with lots of body-slamming. Stacey D'Erasmo's most recent novel is "The Sky Below."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [June 19, 2011]
Review by Booklist Review
Set at the end of the 1980s, Henderson's first novel limns the way a tragic loss brings three people together in unexpected ways. When 16-year-old Jude Keffy-Horn's best friend, Teddy, dies of a drug overdose after a night of heavy partying, Jude blames himself, not knowing that Eliza, the daughter of Jude's father's girlfriend, gave Teddy cocaine the evening of his death. Eliza also slept with Teddy, and she soon discovers she's pregnant with his child. Both Jude and Eliza find themselves drawn into the orbit of Teddy's magnetic older half-brother, Johnny, a punk-rock tattoo artist who ostensibly abstains from drugs, alcohol, and sex. But Johnny's clean living masks the secret he's trying to hide from the world, a secret that threatens to unravel Jude and Eliza's plans to leave childhood behind and jump straight into what they believe will be their exciting adult lives. The magic of Henderson's debut lies in the way she so completely captures the experience of coming-of-age in the turbulent and exciting era that was the 1980s.--Huntley, Kristin. Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Henderson debuts with a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s that departs from the genre's familiar tropes to find a panoramic view of how the imperfect escape from our parents' mistakes makes (equally imperfect) adults of us. Jude Keffy-Horn and Teddy McNicholas are drug-addled adolescents stuck in suburban Vermont and dreaming of an escape to New York City. But after Teddy dies of an overdose, Jude makes good on their dream and forms a de facto family with Teddy's straight-edge brother, Johnny; Jude's estranged pot-farmer father, Lester; and the troubled Eliza Urbanski, who may be carrying Teddy's child. What results is an odyssey encompassing the age of CBGB, Hare Krishnas, zines, and the emergence of AIDS. Henderson is careful, amid all this youthy nostalgia, not to sideline the adults, who look upon the changing fashions with varying levels of engagement. Still, the narrative occasionally teeters into a didactic, researched tone that may put off readers to whom the milieu isn't new-but the commitment to its characters and jettisoning of hayseed-in-the-city cliche distinguish a nervy voice adept at etching the outlines of a generation, its prejudices and pandemics, and the idols killed along the way. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
By the end of the fourth sentence of this debut novel, the reader knows that on December 31, 1987, 15-year-old Teddy will be dead. The Vermont teen, best friend to Jude, 16, dies of a drug overdose that nearly kills Jude as well-but not before Teddy's one glorious sexual encounter impregnates worldly wise Eliza, daughter of Jude's father's New York City girlfriend. The three teens, the children of mothers and fathers who are all over the parenting map (former and current potheads; an alcoholic; one deprived of contact by his ex; a rich, powerful, and controlling Manhattanite; and a sensible Earth-Mother glassblower), break your heart with their awkward, angry, irresponsible stumbling. And yet Jude, shaken by Teddy's death, and Eliza, determined to give birth to her baby, move in unexpected directions, led by Teddy's half-brother Johnny, a tattoo artist and musician associated with a cutting-edge group called straight edge that worships punk while demonizing drugs. Johnny must battle his own demons while taking on Jude's and Eliza's. VERDICT Henderson's powerful, surprising look at lost teens trying to course-correct with the violence-tinged straight-edge culture captivates via its authentic reassurance that adolescence is an often reckless ride to adulthood. [See Prepub Alert, 11/29/10.]-Beth E. Andersen, Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by School Library Journal Review
It begins with the drug-fueled last day in the life of 15-year-old Teddy McNicholas, and spirals from there into the lives of those who were closest to him. Henderson's depiction of late-1980s New York is impressive-from the Straight Edge scene to the gay community's grappling with HIV. (June) (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Screwed-up parents beget screwed-up kids. So it's no surprise that an ill-omened teen pregnancy is the centerpiece of this bold debut, a heady witches' brew.Teddy and Jude, best friends in their mid-teens, have big problems. Jude was adopted at birth, possibly suffering from fetal-alcohol effects. His adoptive parents, Les and Harriet, are feckless potheads, Les growing pot, Harriet making drug paraphernalia. When Jude turns nine, Harriet evicts Les for cheating on her; Jude hasn't seen him since. As for Teddy, his Indian father is supposedly dead; his white mother, a sloppy drunk, has just split. The boys skateboard through their Vermont town, getting high and shoplifting at will. On this last day of 1987, they have a date with Eliza, a total stranger but the daughter of Les' girlfriend. At 15, she's already a cokehead and sexually promiscuous. They gatecrash a party. Eliza gives Teddy cocaine before they have sex in a bathroom and she returns to New York. Back out in the cold, Jude's idea that they inhale Freon is a step too far; he almost dies and Teddy does die, but he will haunt the novel, for he has made Eliza pregnant. All this could be depressing, but it's not, thanks to the barbed language and fast pacing. And Henderson's just getting started. Les shows up to remove Jude to Alphabet City, the ravaged Manhattan neighborhood where he lives. A near neighbor is Teddy's 18-year-old half brother Johnny, whose role becomes increasingly prominent. Johnny is a tattoo artist and musician, as well as a straight-edge hardcore punk (no booze, no drugs). Although a closeted gay, he chivalrously offers to marry Eliza and claim paternity to thwart Eliza's mother, who's pushing for adoption. This is where Henderson loses the thread, wobbling uncertainly between Jude, Johnny and Eliza while doing double duty as a counterculture guide to the straight-edge scene. Context overwhelms characters, the unwieldy cast now including Johnny's AIDS-stricken lover and Teddy's Indian father.Henderson displays a powerful moral imagination; all that's missing is discipline.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
