The Best of Youth: A Novel
Dahlie spins a strange tale of a sensitive and bright but naive young man who is drifting in life. After his parents’ untimely death, Henry Lang inherits $15 million. Financially set, Henry struggles with social and romantic interactions. He is a writer, trying to live an ideal young person’s life in New York City, but things aren’t quite falling into place for him. Henry’s naïveté gets him into a few unfortunate but amusing scenes, one with some extremely costly goats and another involving transportation of firearms. These lighter events are counterbalanced by the quiet depression that permeates the first half of the novel. The pace of the story picks up substantially in the second half, as Henry contracts to ghostwrite a young-adult novel for an unstable, drug-addicted actor. This peculiar partnership sets in motion a series of calamitous events that ultimately push Henry into action. Along the way, Dahlie offers a biting take on the motivations of some authors entering the young-adult field. --Eve Gaus