LIKE THE RED PANDA

Astute, confident and keenly articulated, 24-year-old Seigel's debut about the life and times of an intelligent, disaffected teen is bleak but sharply humorous, and even redemptive. It's the last two weeks of high school for Stella Parrish, whose parents died of a heroin overdose when she was 11; at 17 she is trying to decide between Princeton and oblivion. Despite her smarts and sense of humor, Stella has few friends, a strained relationship with her dazed, slightly inept foster parents and what most teachers would call a bad attitude. Through her sharp, perceptive first-person narration, she offers a Holdenesque view of her upper-middle-class Orange County, Calif., town and all its hypocrisy, the stupidities faced in classrooms and the absurdity of senior year rituals. About a class trip to the zoo, she scoffs, "Yesterday... the kids were spitting on the walls and flicking off people they couldn't wait to get away from, and today they're on the bus with the majority of their graduating class. Even the rebels show up...." In between, Stella visits her nihilistic grandfather, who entertains her with the problems of his own life and plots ways to do himself in. Thick with believable character and detail, though somewhat thin on dramatic momentum, Seigel's novel is a keen portrait of young American angst and all its ironic posturing. The result veers between an earnest critique of the Columbine era and Heathers -like parody, which leaves its conclusion half tragedy, half punch line. Agent, Cressida Connelly. (Apr.)

Forecast: This may attract more teen readers than adults, and should convince even the most jaded with its compelling blend of cynicism and innocence.