Sparse, artsy language illustrates partier Bret's 21st birthday. Fraternity tradition requires that Bret celebrate with 21 drinks. Popular and wealthy Bret is unhappy, and heavily segued flashbacks explain: He's at loose ends academically and his business-focused parents don't care about him. Alas, though at heart he's intellectual (a genius astronomer despite his seven-year neglect of scholarship) and a nice guy who volunteers in the projects, Bret's chosen a path of jackass debauchery in order to be liked. He drinks constantly, treats girls as interchangeable sex objects and supervises the near-fatal beating of a rival fraternity's pledge. Between drinks, he roams campus, musing faux-poetically on his wasted life and orbiting the observatory that represents his losses. Though Bret's on the verge of redemption, he falls tragically victim to the inexcusably dangerous Greek system. There ought to be irony in the contrast between the flowing imagery of Bret's stream of consciousness, the spare dialogue (oddly lacking question marks) and the hyped-up excitement of a fraternity of alcoholics. Instead, there's only choppy prose for a disaffected protagonist. (Fiction. YA)

Gr 10 Up-Bret's 21st birthday coincides with the night of his fraternity's biggest bash of the year. The tradition is for members to do a celebratory 21 shots. Through a series of flashbacks, Bret tries to make sense of his present life, the choices he has made, and the choices made for him. A nocturnal trek takes him from his fraternity house across campus and back to the house, which brings him full circle both physically and spiritually. This book is peppered with explicit language, drinking, and sex. However, readers are given realistic and sometimes moving insight into one young man's spiritual soul searching. Even though the setting is a college in California, the message is universal. Sharon Morrison, Southeastern Oklahoma State University, Durant, OK

Written by a recent college graduate, this chilling first novel combines of-the-minute cultural references and a view of fraternity life as empty, damaging, and sometimes shockingly violent. Bret tells his own story, alternating between the night of his twenty-first birthday, when his fraternity's party spins wildly out of control, and memories of childhood and adolescence that reveal the deeper, more soulful relationships and interests that he repressed as he grew up and tried to fit in. The party is reminiscent of an intensely grim, even sinister version of the movie Animal House : a pact prevents brothers from socializing with unattractive girls (beat-ass bitches), and a rival frat brother is viciously beaten. The detachment in Bret's voice is believable, but it may also distance readers, who may have trouble sympathizing with his choices. The excessive booze and drugs, brutality, empty sexual hookups, and extremely coarse language will unsettle some. Even so, the immediate, unvarnished view will speak directly to many college-bound readers. For older teens seeking other cautionary tales about Greek life, suggest Brad Land's Goat (2003).