Critics' Opinion:
Readers' rating:
Published Jan 2008
432 pages
Genre: Literary Fiction
Publication Information
One Saturday night in Las Vegas, twelve-year-old Newell Ewing goes out with a friend and doesn’t come home. In the aftermath of his disappearance, his mother, Lorraine, makes daily pilgrimages to her son’s room and tortures herself with memories. Equally distraught, the boy's father, Lincoln, finds himself wanting to comfort his wife even as he yearns for solace, a loving touch, any kind of intimacy.
As the Ewings navigate the mystery of what's become of their son, the circumstances surrounding Newell's vanishing and other events on that same night reverberate through the lives of seemingly disconnected strangers: a comic book illustrator in town for a weekend of debauchery; a painfully shy and possibly disturbed young artist; a stripper who imagines moments from her life as if they were movie scenes; a bubbly teenage wiccan anarchist; a dangerous and scheming gutter punk; a band of misfit runaways. The people of Beautiful Children are "urban nomads," each with a past to hide and a pain to nurture, every one of them searching for salvation and barreling toward destruction, weaving their way through a neon underworld of sex, drugs, and the spinning wheels of chance.
BookBrowse Review
"Charles Bock’s many-stranded narrative of runaways, pornographers, strippers, comic-book writers and other lonely people in Las Vegas is big-hearted and ambitious, but ultimately fails to engage the reader in a meaningful way. Bock’s palpably sincere and occasionally excellent prose keeps it from feeling manipulative, but too much of the book gets bogged down by weighty subjects that never evolve from their shock-value heritage. Dispensing with the old “show, don’t tell” adage, Bock shows too much and tells too much, leaving little for the reader to do, and the result is an experience that feels like staring at a train-wreck full of tabloid stories – sadly fascinating glimpses that leave the reader feeling sheepish and empty."
- Lucia Silva.
Other Reviews
"The final sequence .... feels contrived, but Bock's Vegas has hope, compassion and humor, and his set pieces are sharp and accomplished." - Publishers Weekly.
"This powerful indictment of a culture of 'people hurting people for no reason' promises to shake up the moral conscience of every reader. A comprehensive drama; highly recommended." - Library Journal
"The tone varies from titillating close-ups of the adult-entertainment industry to background information on runaways that sounds like a public-service announcement ... Remember Ordinary People? This could have been titled Pathetic People." - Kirkus Reviews.
"Bock’s vision and voice create a fictional landscape as corruptly compelling as Vegas, and as beautiful as the illusions its characters cling to for survival — illustrating what he calls “the nobility inherent in struggles that cannot be won." - The New York Times.
"Beautiful Children is not an easy read, nor is it a polished work ....
And yet this novel deserves to be read more than once because of the extraordinary importance of its subject matter and the sensitivity with which he treats it. As I considered Bock's work, Lawrence's opening to Lady Chatterley's Lover, "Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically," rattled constantly through my brain.
"The story, rendered beautifully, even heartbreakingly, plays out at top speed, blocked only by a chunk of chat-room text and a few other odd snippets. Yet the doom enveloping Newell is so palpable it almost suffocates the reader, too. B." - Entertainment Weekly.
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