The Originals

Michael Nolan is a professor of English at the Memorial University of
Newfoundland.

L.E. Vollick’s first novel flashes back to the mid-1980s from the
early 1990s to reveal the lives of a group of poor, disenfranchised
youth: abusive parents, drug dealers, the club scene, homelessness, and
suicide. The despair and aimlessness of this existence is mirrored and
supposedly partly caused by the threat of imminent nuclear conflict
between the United States and Soviet Russia. The narrator is Magpie, a
sensitive girl who grows to question the outlook of both her peers and
the world.

The novel displays talent but is overwritten, the language too often as
clever as the “global” explanation for teenage hopelessness; the
dialogue in particular sounds artificial. The snippet-like chapters
prevent development of both character and an integrated plot. The
characters seem too innocent, like Mouseketeers on a binge. Magpie’s
“intellectual” friend PK, with his chivalrous pose and pretentious
musings, seems literary rather than real. The hope of the final pages is
perfunctory and forced.

The book is most likely for young adults, though the frequent vulgarity
limits the readership.