Hairstyles of the Damned (2004)

Brian Oswald wants to get laid. That about sums up the aspirations of Damned's antihero, a confused, smart-mouthed, and horny teenager on Chicago's South Side. The book plays like High Fidelity for the safety-pins-and-Mohawks set, with music mapping the characters' interior lives and smartly sequenced mix-tapes charting their emotional growth. Meno examines the schisms in high school society — the D&D geeks, bullying meatheads, teen queens, and brutal skinheads — through the brisk, breathless voice of Oswald, whose conversion from idealistic nerd to sneering punk is forged in a pressure cooker of split homes, bloody street brawls, and cruel Catholic schoolteachers. Despite the bleak backdrop, Hairstyles of the Damned captures both the sweetness and sting of adolescence with unflinching honesty.