Tracking the Urban Nomad: Beautiful Children by Charles Bock

Beautiful Children centres around the disappearance of an enormously irritating and surly 12 year-old boy named Newell who, basically, is just like most 12 year-old boys except that he takes off one hot night in the desert outside of Las Vegas. As his parents try to make sense of Newell's disappearance and their own disintegrating marriage, the events leading up to the vanishing come into focus and reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected characters.

In some ways, this is a mystery novel. We’re introduced to a large cast of loosely- connected characters who were roaming around Las Vegas that night and who provide us with several paths to follow- each of which could easily lead to Newell. While I’d hesitate to call these characters suspects, especially since we don’t know until the book’s final chapter just where or with whom Newell was last seen, they're still not what you'd call wholesome. They're not the sorts of people you'd want your 12 year-old son to get involved with. The cast includes Kenny, a guy almost twice Newell's age who happens to be his only friend; Bing Beiderbixxe, a comic book artist who confesses to Columbine-style fantasies; Cheri Blossom, a stripper with a bull's eye tattooed on her crotch; Ponyboy, Cheri's horrible boyfriend who signs her up to perform in an illegal porn flick; and Daphney, a homeless runaway who is massively pregnant and addicted to heroin.

There's no way this book is going to appeal to the group of late middle-aged women I'm scheduled to try to sell it to at work tomorrow, but it's really damn good. If a novel could be X-rated, this one would be for sure. Countless pages are devoted to detailed descriptions of pornography, for example, and there's an unbelievably graphic gang-rape scene. The sections with the most impact, though, aren't the most pervy or violent, but those that focus on the young runaways like Daphney, her boyfriend Lestat, and a nameless girl with a shaved head (a "pavement virgin," as Daphney calls her) who is dabbling with street life. Readers know that Newell, as a very recent runaway (it's assumed that Newell is a runaway and is still alive), is probably being initiated into this world after his disappearance.

Newell is a difficult character. He's very realistic as a spoiled suburban 12 year-old, alternating effortlessy between being quietly sulky and loudly obnoxious. He makes us cringe, and wonder if this kid is going through a phase or is actually just a total moron. The occasional glimpse inside his head, though, helps us come close to liking him or at least understanding him. The novel creeps towards a point where Newell (confused, overwhelmed, and deeply unhappy because of a series of events beyond his control), needs to make a decision he's not yet old enough or smart enough to make. He can leave his his pampered, air-conditioned, suburban life or fling himself into the desert towards a life more ugly and difficult than it needs to be. It's very easy to see Newell becoming a future Lestat or, if he doesn't get any wiser, a Ponyboy.

Despite it's darkness, Beautiful Children actually ends on an a (sort of) optimistic note. We don't know what path Newell is following, and we don't know if he'll have the strength to escape from it, but we do see one street kid turn out kind of okay, though damaged and not particularly well-adjusted.