Ten Thousand Saints [Paperback]

Eleanor Henderson (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 24, 2012

“Eleanor Henderson is in possession of an enormous talent which she has matched up with skill, ambition, and a fierce imagination.  The resulting novel, Ten Thousand Saints, is the best thing I’ve read in a long time.”
—Ann Patchett, bestselling author of Bel Canto and State of Wonder

A sweeping, multigenerational drama, set against the backdrop of the raw, roaring New York City during the late 1980s, Ten Thousand Saints triumphantly heralds the arrival a remarkable new writer. Eleanor Henderson  makes a truly stunning debut with a novel that is part coming of age, part coming to terms, immediately joining the ranks of The Emperor’s Children by Claire Messud and Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress of Solitude. Adoption, teen pregnancy, drugs, hardcore punk rock, the unbridled optimism and reckless stupidity of the young—and old—are all major elements in this heart-aching tale of the son of diehard hippies and his strange odyssey through the extremes of late 20th century youth culture.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Amazon Best Books of the Month, June 2011: Mostly set in the Lower East Side of 1980s New York City, Ten Thousand Saints is that rare book that paints scenes so vividly you can imagine the movie in your head. I wanted to live inside its pages, where I could imagine not just the scenes themselves, but the cameras, the lights, the actors reading their lines off to the sides of the set. Main character Jude Keffy-Horn--named after a Beatles song by his adoptive hippy parents--spends his high school days in small town Vermont getting high with his best friend Teddy, waiting to turn 16, when he can legally drop out. When Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude is sent to live with his pot-dealer father in New York City. Jude soon falls in with a group of straight edge Hari Krishnas, where his commitment to abstinence in all forms--drugs, sex, meat--becomes an addiction itself. Jude struggles to create an identity amongst the extreme movements taking root downtown, while his parents struggle to understand their son’s rejection of their free love culture. Author Eleanor Henderson's meticulous research into the straight edge movement in the late 1980s has opened a door to a piece of history handled with love, care, and incredibly unforgettable characters. --Alexandra Foster

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Henderson debuts with a coming-of-age story set in the 1980s that departs from the genre's familiar tropes to find a panoramic view of how the imperfect escape from our parents' mistakes makes (equally imperfect) adults of us. Jude Keffy-Horn and Teddy McNicholas are drug-addled adolescents stuck in suburban Vermont and dreaming of an escape to New York City. But after Teddy dies of an overdose, Jude makes good on their dream and forms a de facto family with Teddy's straight-edge brother, Johnny; Jude's estranged pot-farmer father, Lester; and the troubled Eliza Urbanski, who may be carrying Teddy's child. What results is an odyssey encompassing the age of CBGB, Hare Krishnas, zines, and the emergence of AIDS. Henderson is careful, amid all this youthy nostalgia, not to sideline the adults, who look upon the changing fashions with varying levels of engagement. Still, the narrative occasionally teeters into a didactic, researched tone that may put off readers to whom the milieu isn't new-but the commitment to its characters and jettisoning of hayseed-in-the-city cliché distinguish a nervy voice adept at etching the outlines of a generation, its prejudices and pandemics, and the idols killed along the way. (June)
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Ecco; Reprint edition (January 24, 2012)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780062021212
• ISBN-13: 978-0062021212
• ASIN: 0062021214
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.3 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (73 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #225,678 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 26 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Great writing - story lags July 13, 2011

By The geacher VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

Ten Thousand Saints is a very well written book that for some reason failed to resonate with me. It may be a generational thing but I doubt it as I've been charmed by many other coming of age books. I think that the ability of the author to write so vividly, actually sculpting grand theater of the mind may have worked against her a little. The characters were placed in such dark places that the actual story needed to be a grand epic to pull them out of the reader's mental despair.

One of the main characters dies of a drug overdose in the story's set up and exists in the remainder of the book as a point of reference. I didn't find any of the characters to interest me or have me sympathize with their plight though I wanted to, I really did.

I must admit that I continued reading until the very end as the author managed to bring this sad and cautionary tale of drugs and living on the fringe in NYC to life. I kept hoping to relate with someone, anyone, in the pages but for me this never happened. I'm giving the author's writing skills 5 stars but the story only gets 2 stars. I'm rounding down on this one. I'm sure there are many readers more into this New York scene than I & I'm hoping they discover this work. I'm also looking forward to the next work by Eleanor Henderson - she had a good start with this one & I'm sure she has better works ahead, she's certainly capable.

38 of 47 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Straight Edge! May 26, 2011

By Falkor The White Luck Dragon VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

The new novel TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is certainly interesting and to me at least quite original. The book begins on New Year's Eve 1987 in fictional college town Lintonburg,VT (um if you notice Lintonburg contains the exact same letters as Burlington the home of the University of Vermont and the fictional and real cities have many similarities). Two young teenagers, Teddy and Jude, are out partying with their new friend Eliza from Manhattan and tragically Teddy is found dead the next morning after among other things huffing Freon and snorting cocaine. Both Jude and Eliza feel very guilty because Jude pressed the Freon on him and Eliza supplied the cocaine. Actually Eliza offered Teddy more than cocaine that night and she soon discovers she is pregnant from her one time encounter with the now deceased teenager. Eliza, Jude and Teddy's older half brother Johnny form a family of sorts who hope to raise Teddy's baby.

Adults are as important to the story as the teenagers and the effects of parents' actions on their children is a major theme of the book. Jude and his sister Prudence's divorced parents both make their living from marijuana as their dad Les is a prosperous grower and dealer while their artist mother Harriet, perhaps the most stable parent in the novel, makes her living from blowing glass bongs and pipes. Eliza's mom who at the beginning of the story is also Les's girlfriend is a self absorbed ballerina while Teddy and Johnny's mom is an aging hippie known for disappearing when ever things get uncomfortable. Johnny's dad is a prison inmate and Teddy's dad is an unknown man of Asian Indian descent who turns up toward the end of the book and is not what this reader at least expected....

The teenagers turn to Straight Edge music with the accompanying austere lifestyle strongly influenced by Hare Krishna beliefs. It is implied that this is a reaction against their parents' hedonistic ways. Johnny who is a musician and tattoo artist living in the Tompkins Square Park area of Manhattan's alphabet city marries Eliza in hopes of giving his dead brother's baby a chance to stay under his influence even though he has no romantic interest in women. Johnny seems to epitomize the Straight Edge lifestyle and is known as Mr. Clean because of his shaved head and vegan habits.

TEN THOUSAND SAINTS is a novel well worth reading. AIDS, homelessness, gentrification, parenthood, adoption, and drug use are among the many topics incorporated in the book. The author does a great job of bringing the late 1980's in the East Village to detailed life and the choices of the kids and parents in the book will linger in the reader's memory. And the book ends with a very appropriate and effective postscript from 2006 on the last night the famed punk venue CBGB's was open. Read more ›

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars A better editor would have made a better book July 18, 2011

By bert1761 VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Vine™ Review (What's this?)

I have to admit that it's somewhat difficult for me to review this book objectively, because it reminded me of, but never came close to being as good as, one of my all-time favorite books. There is much about "Ten Thousand Saints" that is reminiscent of Michael Cunningham's "A Home at the End of the World," which is a book I have read four times and cherish. But Eleanor Henderson has nowhere near Michael Cunningham's talent for drawing characters about whom a reader cares. Perhaps the problem was that "Ten Thousand Saints" went on much longer than it needed to to made its point, so that boredom lead to disengagement. But while I do believe the book would have benefited from more rigorous editing, I'm not sure it would have made me like this book. I only intermittently cared about a couple of the characters, and most I didn't care about at all. Moreover, I actually found myself having to stop several times and remind myself which character was which; they blended together very easily, largely because the all had the same "voice." I also felt as though the whole "straight-edge" aspect of the book was merely added on in an attempt to give the book something to distinguish itself from the myriad other "coming-of-age-under-traumatic-circumstances" novel. In the end, it just didn't move me, provoke any deep thought in me, or even really entertain me.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars True 'Till Death? March 7, 2012

By A. Ross HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I should admit right up front that I tend not to read "hot" new fiction until a few years after its published, partly because I already have plenty of stacks of unread books in my house, and partly because I feel like that gives it time to cool down, and I'll have more data (ie. friends' opinions) to draw upon before decided to commit to reading it. However, this debut was an exception -- mainly because so many people were telling me that the late-'80s iteration of the straight-edge hardcore subculture that I was a part of plays a huge role in the plot. Now, I know that's a pretty weak reason to pick up a book, but what can I say -- curiosity got the better of me. I was deeply into that scene from 1987-91, and though I experienced mainly down in D.C. (RIP, Safari Club), I drove up to shows at the Anthrax, and the Ritz, and knew plenty of people who were bands, started record labels, did 'zines, etc. and 25 years later, I remain one of the few from that time who's still straight edge.

What I found was not untypical of a first novel: a somewhat haphazard, awkwardly paced and plotted story that crams in way too much and feels like it needs another few drafts to reach a finished, polished state. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of good writing and good storytelling, but it's side-by-side (ha ha, inside joke for my straight edge brethren) with bad writing, soap opera plot developments, clunky transitions, and even a feel-good coda. The book starts extremely strongly, under some high-school bleachers in Burlington, Vermont (for some reason, recast as "Lintonburg" -- why bother?), where we meet Jude and Teddy, two teenage misfits whose main ambition in life is getting chemically stimulated.... A visit from Jude's not-quite stepsister from Manhattan (with the unfortunately transparent last name "Urbanski" -- I mean, come on!) is the catalyst for tragedy and change, as Teddy dies and Jude moves to New York.

It it Jude's journey that leads us through the book, as he gets to know his father, who has been largely absent from his life. He also falls in with Teddy's older brother, who is a fixture of the burgeoning New York City hardcore scene, with his straight-edge band Army of One. (Note: those who would like to read more about this subculture should check out All Ages: Reflections on Straight Edge, a book of interviews that includes a number of people from that era of the scene, or the anthology Sober Living for the Revolution: Hardcore Punk, Straight Edge, and Radical Politics -- unfortunately the two more academic ethnographies of the subculture are kind of weak. And if you want to hear a sampling of the music, start with the New York City Hardcore compilation from 1988, and go from there.) Anyway, the straight edge stuff is relevant to the story because Jude's parents are both aging hippies who, in different ways, make their living from the pot trade, and his stepsister is a stereotypically spoiled rich Manhattan brat with access to lots of drugs, and in the straight edge scene, he finds a path to a more meaningful life in the wake of the death of his best friend. This is a bit overdone (does it really have to be both parents who make a living off weed, can't it be a little more nuanced than that?), but more or less works.

The reason the book didn't work for me is that the author also brings in all kinds of other stuff, such a teen pregnancy and resulting soap opera antics, AIDS, fetal alcohol syndrome, an attempted portrait of the late '80s pre-gentrified Lower East Side, including the characters direct involvement with the real-life Tompkins Square riot, and most of all, a large subplot involving concealed homosexuality. (The homosexuality angle had the potential to be interesting within the context of the characters involved, but the author oddly muddies the waters by suggesting multiple times that the straight edge subculture was some form of mask for latent homosexuality.) It's just too much stuff, too many themes, and the author only has partial control over it. There are characters who have some great moments here and there (for example, Jude's mother's ineffectualness as a parent), but they're too few and far between, and some characters whose voices are too muted. I ultimately feel like it all would have worked better as a series of separate or linked short stories, with maybe one novella devoted to Jude. Read more ›