A Life Without Consequences

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book.
Review: "A Life Without Consequence" is one of the best books I've read this year. It's a quick, satisfying read, touching and poignant, but never overly sentimental or maudlin. What I liked most about the book is that it tells an interesting and compelling story of a boy's life while also providing an intimate look into the world of homeless and group home children. Though the subject is at times heavy, reading this book is a pleasure.

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book.
Review: A fast-paced account of a boys search for love and belonging on the gritty streets of Chicago. He survives abuse by his father and the death of his mother. Follow him through his struggles in mental institutions and group homes where he meets others like him as he becomes determined to not end up another tragedy.
He brilliantly captures the voice of kids growing up with everything stacked against them.

Rating:
Summary: An eye opener
Review: As a new social worker on the streets and in the homes of children from all different backgrounds, I found this book to be an "eye awakening" story of a child's place in this world. Stephen Elliott suffered more than any child should ever have to suffer and against all odds, got his life together. This book should inspire all who work with disadvantaged, abused and neglected children to continue to wake up daily and try to make a difference. This book inspires me...

Rating:
Summary: An eye opener
Review: As a new social worker on the streets and in the homes of children from all different backgrounds, I found this book to be an "eye awakening" story of a child's place in this world. Stephen Elliott suffered more than any child should ever have to suffer and against all odds, got his life together. This book should inspire all who work with disadvantaged, abused and neglected children to continue to wake up daily and try to make a difference. This book inspires me...

Rating:
Summary: An important book and a story well told
Review: Elliott has an important story and a voice that can tell it. I'm a former runaway, now working with poor kids--- and it's gratifying to hear somebody tell the story that so many children are living. He gives a human face to a huge social problem. I recommend this to anyone who works with kids or cares about our future.

Rating:
Summary: Powerful Insight Into Abuse
Review: I am intriqued by the present emphasis on "testing" as a cure for schools and troubled youth. The lead character Paul (AKA Steven Elliot) does quite well on tests yet those test scores will not bring him success or happiness. The need for human engagement and tender interaction is paramount in one's life. Tanya brings that interaction to Paul. It is a closeness that has been absent via his own family. Quite the contrary.... beatings by his father and the death of his mother due to MS leave his spirit empty. As bureaucratic state school systems ignore the causes of youth meltdown, they continue with new rules and punitive regulations that will never connect or make a difference with kids. In NY, for example, the state has just passed a system of rewards and punishments for attendance, ignoring the Pauls of the world and their dire circumstances....P>While society ignores the real problems of youth and pretends by moving forward in school lessons and rote attendance-taking, Paul reaches into the soul of disgarded youth and serves up a full course of Chicago reality.

Rating:
Summary: The Best Book I've Read In A Long Time
Review: On the day Stephen Elliott's A Life Without Consequences arrives a flyer is placed on my door asking for donations to a "foster bundles" program which will give backpacks and suitcases filled with necessities to kids taken into protective custody. Three days of incessant reading later, I will come to find the synchronicity of events almost bizarre.

Elliott's novel is a semi-autobiographical account of his pilgrimage through life as a ward of court. On the book's web site, a reviewer claims it should be required reading for anyone involved in the system. I disagree. It should be required reading. Period.

A Life Without Consequences follows the fall and rise of 14-year-old Paul, a runaway from the memories of a dead mother and an abusive father. Homeless and depressed, Paul slits his wrists-setting him on a journey through a series of institutions and group homes. Throughout teen years of love and loss, Paul recounts with abject realism the ebb and flow of life. Real life.

Many novels of similar ilk falter in the murkiness of melodrama. Elliott steps beyond those bounds with stark candor and humility of the initiated. Without depending on descriptive narratives, Elliott paints his characters with precise dialog so brutally and realistically that it leaves the reader wondering how semi- is semi-autobiographical. The lines between fiction and reality are that hazy under Elliott's pen.

If you're looking for sympathetic rationale or a wan victim's tale, leave Elliott's book on the shelf. He's smart, witty and a brilliant combination of self-deprecation and ego. If you're looking to own an early novel by an author you can count on rising to glory, open up your wallet. While the story is engaging, it's a ruse for Elliott's pared down prose. His ability is deceptively understated beneath the storyline, but that's what makes his writing so compelling.

I'm a book harlot. I sleep with the discarded remains of authors at my feet. In stacks next to my bed. With my hand curled around their unfinished works. But I cheat on them. I start with one and drift to another, mid-chapter, without even a kiss goodbye. When I lose interest, I return to the jilted and pick them up until they exhaust me again. A few weeks ago, I cheated on Pulitzer Prize winner Michael Cunningham when the new kid on the block showed up in my mailbox: Stephen Elliott. But once I opened Elliott's world, there was no cheating to be done.