Young God

February 10, 2014
The protagonist of Morris’s slim debut novel, told in short fragments and set in the hills of rural North Carolina, is the barely adolescent Nikki, whose mother dies within the first few pages of the book. To avoid being taken by child services, Nikki infiltrates her father’s trailer, hell-bent on reviving, and eventually taking over, the family business: in this young girl’s world, times are tough and drugs provide the only means for making a lucrative living. As a budding dealer of 13, Nikki has yet to suffer the inevitable wear and tear of the job: bad skin, meth mouth, and the effects of fast food and cheap beer. The setup is promising, but all the characters remain two-dimensional, uncaring and unaffected. Nikki witnesses her mother’s death, as well as a grisly murder soon after, but is unconvincingly stoic. Morris has kept her heroine at arm’s length, and therefore she, and the book as a whole, devolves into a slick romanticism of poverty, youth, and violence.

March 15, 2014
A bleak novel of poverty and drugs in rural North Carolina, reminiscent of Flannery O'Connor but without a redemptive vision. At the center of the action is 13-year-old Nikki, whose mother dies at the beginning of the novel. This leads Nikki back to her father, Coy Hawkins, recently released from prison and, not coincidentally, formerly the biggest coke dealer in the county. Coy has taken up with Angel, a bleached-blonde teenager who dresses in high heels and see-through outfits; he pimps her out in cheap hotel rooms to earn money for his next big score. High on his list of resentments is another pimp, who, the month before, had tried to wrest Angel away, but Coy is able to track down his rival and slice and dice his face. If we need further evidence of Coy's vileness, we get it when Nikki introduces him to Renee, another adolescent whose virginity should bring a high price. But Coy rapes her, shoots her and, with Nikki's help, cuts up her body and leaves her where animals will find her. The Next Big Thing for Coy is black heroin, which he's convinced will make him rich. Nikki is far more afraid of being discovered by the Department of Social Services than of being mistreated by her father, so she develops her own drug business and shows herself more than equal to her egregious and slimy father. It is indeed rare to find such entrepreneurial spirit in a slightly post-pubescent teen. Morris writes brilliantly in short, spasmodic chapters, but her vision borders on despair.

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April 1, 2014
In her first novel, Morris breaks the bones of traditional prose and resets them to serve her raw protagonist, Nikki. At 13, Nikki has survived a troubled childhood in the Carolinas as the daughter of drug traffickers. In fact, her father used to be the most important pusher in the county. After an abrupt tragedy and its aftermath forces Nikki to once more rely on his support, she finds herself being groomed as his replacement. But Nikki resists anyone else's definition of her or her role in the world, and soon she has managed to claim her own power, which she feels is like that of Godthe power over pleasure, pain, life, death, and everything in between. Whether it's her body or her brains she must marshal to keep control, Nikki isn't afraid to bruise, break, or bleed. Morris' spare language and short chapters (some only a sentence) serve to support the captivating, unpredictable personality of her intense young narrator, making this a novel fans of finely made fiction will fly through before they've even blinked.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)