Poe Holly is 16 years old and lives in Los Angeles with her mother. She is privileged but angry and identifies with the counter-culture; she sings in a band and likes all sorts of loud angry rock music.  But her saving-the-world mother is going to live in South America for a year, and so Poe is going to live with her father in culturally conservative Benders Hollow, which she calls “a Podunk wine town.”  She has had almost no contact with her father over the years, since her parents split up when she was a baby, and her mother never talked about him.  But it turns out that he is a counselor at the high school she will be attending.  When she starts at the school, she finds it fits the stereotype of a rich institution catering to the powerful people in town and speaking two-faced nonsense to defend their actions.  She sees a boy being beaten up by members of the football team because he is different, and the boys responsible go unpunished.  She is outraged that the people in power refuse to stand up for right, and instead hide behind their rules, and she is determined to set things right if no one else will.

The plot about the high school is a little clichéd, but the novel explores some interesting themes.  Poe is full of resentment at both her parents, and does not want to be like her mother, but she shows the same willingness to sacrifice her relationships with her family members in order to help strangers.  Furthermore, her desire for justice contrasts well with her father’s desire to help people by sorting through their emotional problems.  Her father’s therapeutic attitude looks extraordinarily ineffective, kowtowing to threats and just aiming to make everyone happy.  Poe, by contrast, has no hesitation in making other people uncomfortable and confronting them with their own inadequacies.  She is in danger of feeling very alone, since she finds that nearly everyone is inadequate. 

The unabridged audiobook is read by Kim Mai Guest; she gives a good performance, making Poe a lively and feisty young women.  Brutal is a short novel for young people, but it has enough complexity to hold readers’ interest.

© 2009 Christian Perring                   

Christian Perring, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Dowling College, New York.

Keywords: YA Lit