33 Snowfish

I had read another of Adams Rapp's book and loved it. His style of writing is completely realistic, allowing you to hear the story from the characters themselves. He doesn't sugar coat it and picks topics that are complete depressing but in a weird warped way gives you a happy ending. He brings out the dark humor in the most horrific events and shows you the raw material of peoples personalities. No matter how racist, dirty, perverted, or crazy. The language in the book could be extreme for you if you are under 13, but the language has a purpose in reviling things about the characters.
I really enjoyed it, it is now one of my favorites, and you should read it.

Well, I really wanted to like this book! It had a very artistic cover, and the artwork inside was intriguing. As a teacher who constantly tries to keep up with Young Adult fiction trends, I gave this one a try, and to my dismay, it was quite depressing, dark, and exploited the seedier side of humanity. Not quite the Young Adult fiction I would recommend to my high school students. There are frequent references to drugs, prostitution, murder, as well as scenes alluding to adult-child sex and snuff movies starring children.

This dark depiction of society's underbelly was captured very well on paper, and I credit the author for his authentic portrayal of some of our struggling members of society. However, I cannot recommend this book to any of my students for fear of parent backlash, or worse.

I would recommend this book if you want to discover stuggling characters existing our society, but I wouldn't consider this a "teacher-recommended" book by any means. Simply put, not one I would put on my reading shelf in my classroom.

Author and playwright Adam Rapp has created a masterful tale of woe in 33 SNOWFISH. With all of the trappings of "high literature" (there are stream-of-consciousness passages and multiple narrators), the author transcends the Problem Novel genre in this homage to Faulkner's As I Lay Dying.

Like many of Faulkner's novels, 33 SNOWFISH depicts society's lowest, common denominator while somehow managing to make these characters three-dimensional and fairly sympathetic. They are at once repulsive and pitiful; the reader is drawn into their lives much like commuters passing by a car wreck. One cannot help but look or want to lend a hand.

This is the story of Custis, Curl, and Boobie, two teen runaways and one pre-teen. Each has a myriad of issues and a litany of anti-social behaviors that include pyromania, murder, prostitution, robbery, kidnapping, and weapon possession. We are dragged along on their ill-fated journey, where we learn about their past while watching them in the disastrous present. That the author finds a way to redeem one of the characters by the end of the story is a remarkable and credible feat.

Many reviewers issue a disclaimer about 33 SNOWFISH due to the lives of kids on the street being so graphically and dispassionately outlined. There are many adult themes and some profanity. This book is not for the squeamish. But neither is it a trite, formulaic, sensationalistic bombshell; every word, every paragraph, and every page is essential to the journey of these characters, even though only one meets an end that is appealing.

Rapp is to be commended for not "dumbing down" a story of the street for a wider readership. Many other young adult novels have a didactic message that is cumbersome and cliché, sounding a warning as loud as a tuba, leaving nothing for the reader to reflect upon. But 33 SNOWFISH is that rare book that is art for the sake of art, that makes the reader think for the message, that makes its audience reach for the gift of understanding, and the novel does it without wasting any words or pages.


Faulkner's fans and his detractors will appreciate this novel, as will young adult readers. Highly recommended.

Reviewed by: Mark Frye, author and reviewer

Adam Rapp has written another crisp one. It's the language, especially, that grips you and makes you eat your tears and laughter. From the first line -- "On top of everything else, Boobie's got the clap." -- I found myself devouring each next line in search of a gem. Here are a few:

"That hat of his was so orange it looked like it would have vitamin C in the flaps."

"There was so much blood on Boobie's shirt you could smell the metal in it, and it wasn't coming from the baby, because the baby was cleaner than a Christmas card."

"Boobie just stopped and stood there for a minute and looked up at the sky, which was so black it was like God burnt it."

"It's like there ain't no real life inside a place if you don't got no table."

"The sun was getting weak and everything was starting to look like metal."

Boobie, Custis, and Curl are painted with the freshest of brushes and rarest of strokes. What's particularly amazing is the way everything in this depraved world feels so cool and clean through Custis' eyes. Even though they're on the run from the police because of what Boobie did to his parents and are looking for a rich family to sell Boobie's baby brother to, he holds out hope that his gat, the Skylark, and Curl's trick money are somehow going to hold their lives together.

This novel "wasn't sad like tears are sad. It's sad like the weather is sad when you think it's spring but then one of those cold rains comes." While we don't usually get to experience the lives of the dark survivors at society's fringes, 33 SNOWFISH is Adam Rapp's way of showing us ourselves in the souls of the broken. It's clear that the more worries the heart has, the smaller and dimmer it gets, and that it might get snuffed out if not given the right amount of hope at just the right time.

Reviewed by Jonathan Stephens

Adam Rapp, 33 Snowfish (Candlewick, 2003)

There should be a warning label on novels written in dialogue, or at the very least a glossary a la A Clockwork Orange at the back. While Rapp's protagonists here speak in somewhat recognizable English, a good deal of what they say simply makes no sense, and the slang they're using is never explained. This leads very quickly to an unreadable book.

In it three teens-- Boobie, Curl, and Custis-- are on a trip. Where? They don't know. They plan to raise some money by selling Boobie's infant brother, whom they've kidnapped and taken with them.

The seeds of something that could have been brilliant. For all the book's unreadability, the characters are well-drawn and mostly distinct, with appealing quirks and depths of amorality rarely found in adult novels, much less stuff penned for the teen set. I'm fond (too much so, perhaps) of depravity for the sake of depravity, but Rapp has written the book so that the reader is forced to sift through acres of slang terms to get to the point, which obviously dilutes the very point he's trying to make (not to mention the imagery associated with it); a hard read for all the wrong reasons. Not worth your time. (zero)