East Carolinian

Issue date: 4/9/09 Section: Features

Media Credit: staff photo

Set in Las Vegas, Charles Bock's first novel, "Beautiful Children," centers around a missing 12-year-old boy named Newell Ewing.

The well-developed supporting characters in this book have relationships that interweave and tangle in the story's already twisted plot.

Moving back and forth through time makes "Beautiful Children" as mysterious as the story is deep. Each chapter introduces another character, leaving the reader to wonder what is happening to the last. Each character is somehow connected to Ewing and his disappearance.

Ewing's purpose in the plot is shrouded in mystery. He appears to be just a spoiled rich kid: the product of a wealthy businessman and former Vegas showgirl.

His relationship with his parents is that of a typical cocky adolescent. However, his parents, who have given him everything he could possibly want, can't believe that he is a runaway and think he must have been abducted.

Last seen with his older friend, Kenny, the suspense builds as the reader is only shown flashes of the night Ewing disappeared.

Kenny comes from a much different background than Ewing. Kenny is a poor high school student who spends his days perfecting drawings hopes of becoming a famous artist. He is the son of an alcoholic but is living with his aunt in a trailer park.

While Kenny and Ewing are out together, they meet Bing Beiderbixxe, a comic book artist who tells Kenny what a promising young artist he is. The boys also meet up with an eccentric teen who is a punk and a witch, known in the story as "The Girl With The Shaved Head."

The Girl With The Shaved Head comes into play during "Part Two" of the novel when the plot really begins to thicken. It is discovered that she, like Ewing, is feeling oppressed by her mother and likes to roam the streets on her own with a group Bock calls "urban nomads."

Originally from Las Vegas himself, Bock's description of the city is dead on.

Critics from The New York Times Magazine, New Orleans' Times-Picayune and the San Francisco Chronicle all say that Bock's writing style is like that of Charles Dickens. While there is definitely a Dickensian aspect to the writing, the set up is much more modern. The characters are all related to the plot and disappearance of Ewing; the gritty, dark and graphic descriptions of each scene; and the skewed order of events are similar in style to Quentin Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction." Bock has set the book up excellently: the reader will be kept guessing about Ewing's fate until the very end of the book.

Hauntingly realistic and suspenseful, Bock's bestselling "Beautiful Children" is a tale not to be missed.



This writer can be contacted at features@theeastcarolinian.com.

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