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herre are the other two i mentioned earlier
Youth in Revolt by CD Payne
Told as the diary of an oversexed 14-year-old, this three-part comic-novel deals with the usual adolescent bugbears: divorced parents, rebellion, virginity. Set in the cultural wasteland of trailer-park northern California, the episodic plot involves arson, car theft, police brutality and more. Nick tries to win an even more precocious girl his age, Sheeni Saunders, by means of allusive letters and screwball schemes which eventually backfire. Payne gives his narrator an overblown literary voice that contrasts with the attendant embarrassments of his age (e.g., the problems of finding a place to masturbate privately in an R.V.), but the narrative strains for comedic effect. With its Woody Allen-like punch lines, double entendres and overall high-school atmosphere, the novel reads like YA fiction: a nihilist Daniel Pinkwater. And for all Nick's intellectual pretension and artificial speech (qualities echoed, oddly, by nearly all the teenaged characters), he seems devoid of imagination or any redeeming qualities; nor does he care about anything other than satisfying his pubescent desires. And, though in the book's final third the boy comes alive in his drag persona of Carlotta (and Payne admirably brings home his convoluted plot), it is too late to revitalize an ultimately unsympathetic hero.
And its followup, REVOLTING YOUTH
Payne's self-published Youth in Revolt: The Journals of Nick Twisp became an underground sensation and garnered a youthful cult following for hero Nick Twisp, a linguistically precocious 14-year-old diarist. Later published by Doubleday, it has since sold more than 25,000 copies and is in development as a miniseries by MTV. In his latest adventure, Twisp, now independently wealthy as a result of his invention, the hugely successful "Wart Watch," is still disguised as Carlotta Ulansky, living in splendor with his maid, Mrs. Ferguson, and her son, Dwayne, and is once again attending high school in Ukiah, Calif. The deception is necessary because he is being pursued by the FBI for inadvertently burning down half of Berkeley. His girlfriend, the ever-luscious Sheeni Saunders, knows Carlotta's true identity and is accommodating her/his overactive hormones once or twice a week. The saga of teen angst and rebellion unfolds as before in Nick's first-person journal entries. Ever jealous of Sheeni's past flame, Trent Preston, Nick/Carlotta persuades Trent to elope with his present girlfriend, Apurva, to Mississippi, where 16-year-olds are allowed to marry. But Nick's triumph is short-lived. The FBI tracks him down, and he must once again skip town, ending up in Mexico, where he has plastic surgery and changes his identity. Going by the name of Rick S. Hunter, Nick runs into Sheeni in Baja, has an affair with her as Rick and discovers that she's pregnant with his baby. As in the previous volume, the plot becomes increasingly convoluted, but unlike its predecessor, this installment never catches fire. Nick's voice, although witty, seems less 14 than 40. Still, fans of the previous book will want to read this one, and cross-promotion with Payne's Frisco Pigeon Mambo (reviewed above) will help both titles.
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http://www.geminicrow.com
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