White, Christian

Stoddard's debut unconvincingly follows 20-year-old Christian White's downward spiral into a haze of drugs, petty crime, and hustling. Forced to leave home by his deeply religious mother, his childhood compromised by a father incarcerated for murder and a brother killed in a hit-and-run accident, Christian moves to San Francisco and becomes the boy toy of Cale, a well-to-do gay methamphetamine dealer, but ends up on the run in New York, possibly as a murderer. Seems Christian can't quite remember how he woke up in the bedroom of a dismembered man. Memory loss is a recurring theme, which allows the author to overuse the predictable literary device of abrupt flashes of insight by the suddenly enlightened character. There are also strange jumps and gaps in the story that are lightly sketched over or unexplained. Christian is a "great poet," yet we never once encounter any of his poems. The novel apes Hubert Selby Jr.'s Requiem for a Dream, but lacks Selby's interesting characters and accomplished prose. Clothing labels get more attention than character development, and despite his suffering, Christian comes across as self-absorbed, vapid, and materialistic. (Jan.)