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Beautiful Children: A Novel

Charles Bock
Random House (2008)
ISBN 9781400066506
Reviewed by Lynn Bee for RebeccasReads (5/08)

Charles Bock takes us into the dark and dirty world of Las Vegas, when a twelve-year-old boy fails to return home.

The child’s mother, Lorraine, becomes obsessed with saving cats when she can no longer find her own child to rescue. Then she volunteers with Nevada Child Search, giving herself, and the reader, poignant hope for the many children who simply disappear each year. Her marriage disintegrates. Husband Lincoln manages to fulfill his job duties, but finds pornography as a pitiful and dismal release.

The prose is powerful and the characters more than disturbing. Newell Ewing, the missing boy, is spoiled, snotty, self-centered and all too typical. His rootless friend Kenny is old enough to drive and introduce Newell to many of the seedier dives and activities of Vegas. There’s a stripper with a good heart and implants that have hindered her sexual pleasure. She’s a well-developed and almost likable addition to the cast. Her demanding boyfriend is a scheming porn courier. The insider views into stripping and the porn business are fascinating. Then there’s a semi-successful comic book artist with lots of issues, out for a little degenerate pleasure in Sin City. The myriad alienated teens, thoughtful, yet unthinking, tug at the reader’s heart, mind and soul.

This is a crude, rude, and consuming story. Bock deals with teen sex, drugs and isolation, adult despair, and society’s problems as a whole. The details of Newell’s disappearance are both connected and disconnected in this disturbing first novel. Bock even manages to add touches of humor, and a list of resources for tracking missing children.

The subject matter of “Beautiful Children” truly interested me, yet I felt parts of the tale were overlong and repetitive. However, Bock demonstrates a masterful grip on both the real and surreal in the city of Las Vegas.

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