Title: The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys Author: Chris Fuhrman Publisher: Pan "By eighth grade, Jesus Christ had been bone meal and rumours for most of the 1974 years, but we were only thirteen." So begins one of the ballsiest, most touching novels yet to combine teenage sex, sea monkeys, a Nixon-faced dart board, race relations and death itself. Narrated by Francis Doyle, a Catholic schoolboy confused by the opposite sex, bemused by the idiocy of his religious teachers, and beaten on a regular basis by his father, The Dangerous Lives follows him and his loyal group of friends as they plan to avoid punishment for creating 'Sodom vs. Gomorrah 74', a comic showing the school's staff in positions of supplication not seen since De Sade put down his pen. Doyle is of course in first love with Margie who has her own Catholic guilt and Leviticus issues to deal with, and there's Tim, a 12 year old already world weary, quoting William Blake and sporting Picasso screen-printed T-shirts. Where Kevin Arnold and friends were the ones trying to fade into the background, wanting what everyone else had, Tim and Francis and Co are the ones bravely seeking more, knowing a sedentary existence is never enough for some. It's not at all saccharine though (thank God), the bitterness of adolescence, as kids turn to teens turn to wondering why they'd been lied to all along is captured and held, and anyone (like me) who has challenged a teacher's observations on historical and moral matters, only to be brought down by the torrent of babble about authority of your elders will revel in Tim's nun-enraging take on the Civil War. Like a cross between The Ice Storm and The Virgin Suicides, (the age? the era?), Fuhrman recreates a world where you know everything is set to fuck up, but in the meantime you can see the stars, you can feel the wind through your hair as you're riding the old push bikes, riding past the drive-in showing Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid and Super Fly TNT, "but several of the letters had been subtracted and rearranged below to spell TITTY. The drive-in was so decadent that it allowed this to stand, lit up like Christmas, on its busiest night." Freedom, change await, but life has a way of walking right over the top. Tragedy doesn't also sit waiting to pounce in the text of this aching beauty. Author Fuhrman died of cancer whilst working on the final draft, and it leaves the reader wondering (like in all our lives?) of what might have been. It's a book that leaves you hurting and yet somehow blessed, like a smile you're forced to make when slapped around by irony. The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys is the Dharma Bums of a pubescent generation, and my choice as the best novel of 2002.