Under the Wolf, Under the Dog

I read this all in one day. I really couldn't put it down. I bought this book unsure what to expect but everything hit you in waves. I like how you're at odds with Steve; you want to sympathize with him but at the same time some of his actions are inexcusable (especially at the end). I would read it again; this has surprisingly turned into a favorite.

Usually, I hate it when people compare books to Catcher in the Rye, but here it's obviously deserved--not only because you can see the parallels between Holden and Steve's journeys with your eyes closed, but because, like Catcher, this book is amazing. It's a trainwreck that's great because it's so painful and real (and sometimes funny), and by the end I really didn't care that it was a Catcher ripoff, because it's just so good.

Ignore the fact that others have already mentioned this, and let me be the first to compare Adam Rapp's novel UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG to J.D. Salinger's CATCHER IN THE RYE. Of course, their characters Steve Nugent and Holden Caulfield are different, but they're alike in the way HoHo's know they're related to Ding Dongs. Critics have called Steve names like "marginalized" and "outcast," but if that's Steve, then that's Holden as well. Which it's not. I'd like to see those critics try to deal with the death of their mother, finally watching cancer finish its job in her upstairs bedroom. I want to see them overcome a group of delinquent friends trying to deal drugs and rob the Piggly Wiggly market. I want to see them discover their brother hanging by a necktie down in the basement. How would they handle it and would that make them "marginalized"? Here's the thing -- Steve is just a Gray Grouper at Burnstone Grove filling his journal with the past to hopefully make sense of the present. He's in love with Silent Starla, a Blue Grouper who isn't silent like everyone says. He's just a sixteen year old trying to recover from a life where "you have to deal with stuff on your own and that's all there is to it." It's this search that leads him to contemplate the universe and drugs, religion and the purpose of life, and "that particular part of the morning `between the wolf and the dog' when the sky is so deep blue and spooky or whatever that you can't tell what's what." That's where Steve is. It's the reason he's at Burnstone Grove instead of the Gifted School he ran away from. And it's the reason the unique voice in his mind will howl in your brain, bringing you to laughter, and God help you, tears. Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

This book is just amazing and beautiful. There's really nothing else more to say. Reading it is the equivalant of an out of body experience. It leaves you thinking.

In Under the Wolf, Under the Dog, Rapp brilliantly tells the story of a misguided young person who overcomes death and dysfunction within the ever-constricting nature of lower middle class suburbia. What makes this book work so well is how honest the main character is with the reader. Though his behavior is at times questionable, the reader wants to work with him throughout the story because Rapp creates a loyalty between what the protagonist is doing, and what the reader wants him to do. Understanding pain through a younger perspective, and an intelligent perspective, encourages and reiterates how much more advanced the young mind is despite what some adults may think. Under the Wolf, Under the Dog is humorous, heart warming, and truly enlightening, and turns a troubled teen into a hero of sorts; a hero that deserves to be respected, and be happy despite his and his family's shortcomings.

"I was so in love, I went into my room and drank half a bottle of Robitussin." Reading Adam Rapp's upcoming novel, UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG, is like watching a car wreck in slow motion...and it's such an awesome wreck that taking your eyes off of it for even a second is totally out of the question. "We smoked and watched the trash whip around for a few minutes. Trash will make some pretty interesting shapes if you watch it long enough. I thought maybe it was trying to tell me something. Like my future or whatever. The same way people look at tea leaves." In fact, not only couldn't I take my eyes off this book, reading it as I traveled over last Wednesday night from San Francisco to Chicago for Book Expo, but then on the flight home from Chicago last night, despite traveling with backbreaking quantities of new books in tow, I chose to read this one a second time. It's that good. "It was amazing. If you ever want to change your life immediately, just sit down in some random fast-food place and start urinating in your pants. My lap was all wet and warm, and it was running down my legs and filling my Red Wing boots. "I even told the manager. I said, 'I'm totally pissing my pants, man. Sorry.' "The manager twiddled the ends of his mustache. "He went, 'Well, that's not very sanitary, son.' Now I was his son. 'I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave.' " 'Whatever, Dad,' I said. I was his son, so he was obviously my dad, right? "We were one big happy Pizza Hut family." UNDER THE WOLF, UNDER THE DOG is the emotion-filled story told to us by Steve Nugent, a lovable and confused sixteen-year-old Gifted and Talented student who is tall and skinny, tends toward the socially inept side of the scale, and who, when we meet him, has ended up in a facility after his mother dies from cancer and his big brother kills himself shortly thereafter. "I'm from East Foote, which is on the Illinois side of the Mississippi. Foote is on the Iowa side, and it's about ten times the size of East Foote. To put it in perspective, before I left, most people in East Foote had to go stand on this old livestock promontory just to get cell phone reception. "So I'm currently in residence at this place in the middle of Michigan called Burnstone Grove. There are about thirty-five kids here. About half of us are drug addicts, and the other half have tried to check out of this world in one way or another. Probably a third of us have dabbled in both pursuits. I don't entirely fit into either category, so I'm what they call a Gray Grouper. The Red Groupers are the junkies, and the Blue Groupers are the suicide kids. There are only seven Gray Groupers, and we're generally kept here for a month or two before we're either shipped back home or sent to another, more affordable, facility. The Red and Blue Groupers can stay here for over a year sometimes. They get to see the seasons change and everything. So far it's been nothing but snow and ice and frozen trees and this v