Review: The Rapid Maturation from Middle School to High School
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 12 20, 2013
Alan Gallauresi has that gift of creating characters that embody all the angst, fantasy, dreamscapes, and puberal dissociative thinking and actions that create that trying time of leaving middle school and starting high school. Without strolling into Joycean reveries of a Stephen Dedalus or picking at body detritus a la Salinger's Holden Caulfield he simply places the story before us and lets it develop - plain language with inserted colloquialisms of today's young adults to be. A previous book titled 'Repetition' toyed with time travel cum quasi sci-fi and a rather popular self-help book make this book his third venture into the world of novel.  According to the promo materials this is a book directed toward the Young Adult crowd: for this reader this is more a book for reminiscing about those fragile formative years where so much of our adult mindset is made. Gallauresi is still forming his style, but with HEIST SCHOOL FRESHMEN he shows signs of hitting his stride.The formative young man in the lead role of this study of life in the first year of high school is Angelo Bastillo - a lad who comes from a dysfunctional family (uncomplimentary father and mother and looser brother), leaves the middle school camaraderie having had his heart `crushed', discovering that the classes he faces are rather loathsome in his mind, becoming the target of the school bullies, making intermittent connection with the suicide line until that little `chance' happens: the discovery of a stash of ill-gotten money. The manner in which Angelo and comrades plan the `heist ` of the title forms the well woven mystery and intrigue peppered with age appropriate humor and shenanigans that the author tosses off with ease and aplomb. This is a short novel, easily readable in an evening, and one that carries more weight than it appears at first. There is some very fine insight into early teen behavior and mentation here that indicates Alan Gallauresi has a solid start on a writing career. Grady Harp, December 13