Down to the Dirt

From Barnes & Noble

Had Holden Caulfield abused heavy drugs and grown up in Nova Scotia, he would probably have been friends with Keith Kavanagh, the lovable loser of a character masterfully portrayed in Joel Hynes’s terrific debut. Bursting with black humor and violence, Down to the Dirt puts a welcome, if not always pleasant, spin on the coming-of-age novel. We found this a gripping read that refuses to be tame.

Publishers Weekly

Rebellious adolescents are pretty much the same the world over, a point borne out by Newfoundland-born Hynes's debut about growing up in a small town in Canada's easternmost province: his teenage characters get high, have sex, and insult and outrage the adults around them. True, they speak a Celtic-tinged dialect (which Hynes captures masterfully), and they commit their minor social crimes in an isolated, rural setting that amplifies their discontent. Hynes's antihero is Keith Kavanagh, a hard-drinking bad boy ("a bit of a savage," his best friend Andy admits), who strives in self-destructive ways for love and respect. Keith's clipped but evocative narration trades off with the similarly poetic, snappish, adolescent narration by Andy and Keith's girlfriend, Natasha. The self-contained chapters read almost like short stories: the birth of Andy and Keith's friendship; Keith's drug-addled killing of a sick cat; a run-in between Natasha and her father over a sex toy. Raunchy, humorous and energetic, Hynes's novel engrosses, but never truly surprises: the author owes a large debt to Holden Caulfield for Keith's interior monologues and consistent attacks on hypocrisy. But it's a gritty, moving portrait of growing up-or trying to, anyway. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

If all you did was read new fiction, you might think that youth around the world know only how to be self-destructive and solipsistic: drugs, idleness, and obsessive relationships rule, as if visceral wretchedness were the sole means to get discovered as a writer. Until this formula changes, we can at least take comfort in authors like Hynes, whose debut, while typically dark and dank, is well written, fervently paced, and the deserved recipient of Newfoundland's Percy Janes First Novel Award. The opening chapters are the novel's best, each reading like an isolated short story and capturing vivid moments and the strong-willed voice of Newfoundland rabble-rouser Keith Kavanough, his childhood friend Andy, and his girlfriend Natasha. A vicious hockey game, a beach party, and Keith's first sexual encounter with a much older woman are all haunting and real, which makes Keith's later decline that much more depressing. One hopes that Hynes can find catharsis, if not a happy ending, in his next novel. This first go is recommended for literary fiction collections.-Prudence Peiffer, Cambridge, MA Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

The lives and loves of tormented and booze- and drug-addled teenagers in Newfoundland are examined and revealed to be as chaotic and unpleasant as those of tormented, booze- and drug-addled teenagers in North Dakota or Belarus. With courteous acknowledgements to a long list of Newfoundland arts-funding entities and many friends, debut novelist Hynes goes digging for his portraits of maritime provincial youngsters, concentrating on the psychic agonies of Keith Kavanagh, dropout, drunk, screwup, passable hockey player, occasional fisherman, vandal and thief. Keith was cute enough as a teen to be taken to bed by an older woman, but whose life after the subsequent seduction of Natasha, a pal's girlfriend, spirals ever downward until he becomes a candidate for detox. Natasha seems nearly as desperately unpleasant, being an equal participant in the seduction and having nothing against serial shagging under the nose of her irritable parents. Hynes follows the duo around their economically depressed coastal milieu, breaking away at (too-infrequent) intervals to let a couple of their ex-classmates have a say. Some of the few relatively upbeat moments feature well-executed scenes hockey-rink scenes, but even those degenerate into bloody violence. (But then-it is hockey.) There is a particularly gruesome scene of what was to have been the mercy killing of a dying pet cat, an assignment that goes particularly bad for Keith. Then, as the rather violent young couple begin to drift apart, victims of their ages, Natasha's wispy ambitions and Keith's violent addictions, Keith runs afoul of the law and is put on probation. The unlovely couple try to set up housekeeping in St. Johns, but they haven't gotthe hang of it, and Natasha strikes out for the big city, leaving Keith to self-destruct. Violent rock music rendered in prose.