Breznican also illustrates nicely the development, derailing and re-forging of fragile new relationships. Everyone has their own agenda, and sometimes the experiences that older adults accumulate can be as crippling as the lack of experiences for younger adults when determining how best to act in a situation. All of the characters, faculty, students and family members are well drawn and complex. There are no heroes or villains in this novel. Readers, as will the students, learn (or remember) how treacherous navigating the hallways of high school can be. In Brutal Youth, Anthony Breznican allows readers to “attend” the 1991 school year at St. The question now is who will break first? This does not sit well with the upperclassmen, most of the faculty or the parish priest, Father Mercedes, and now both boys will be targeted to receive escalating “pranks” until they conform to St. And, being in no mood to tolerate the ritualized abuse, Stein does the unthinkable: he fights back. Stein’s face bears a scar that he will not talk about. It is during this “fun” that Davidek befriends fellow freshman Noah Stein.

It’s all in good, character building fun. Michael’s for the ritualized hazing of the incoming underclassmen by both the students and the faculty. He’s an average student from an average family, which makes him the perfect target on his first day at St. As long as she sticks to her meticulously thought out plan, this time she will be popular. Michael’s for a fresh start with people who don’t know her or her family. At her old school, Lorelei became an outcast after her mother’s debilitating accident at work. Lorelei Paskal expects this to be a great year. In Brutal Youth, debut author Anthony Breznican takes us on a journey through the freshman year in a very troubled Catholic high school in Pennsylvania.

For most, the Dickens quote reflects the wild and unpredictable swings between ecstasy and agony that is the high school experience. Others will experience the opposite: four years of seemingly endless antagonism and disrespect possibly alternating with utter invisibility. For some people, the time they spent in grades 9-12 will come to be the happiest in their lives, their “glory days,” and will represent the lifelong pinnacle of their personal achievements. One place for which this quote can be particularly apt is high school.

This quote from Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities has been used to describe many and various situations and circumstances. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times”.

Brutal youth a novel anthony breznican