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Ten Thousand Saints

by Eleanor Henderson (Goodreads Author)

3.53 of 5 stars 3.53 · rating details · 3,233 ratings · 527 reviews

Adopted by a pair of diehard hippies, restless, marginal Jude Keffy-Horn spends much of his youth getting high with his best friend, Teddy, in their bucolic and deeply numbing Vermont town. But when Teddy dies of an overdose on the last day of 1987, Jude's relationship with drugs and with his parents devolves to new extremes. Sent to live with his pot-dealing father in New...more

Hardcover, 388 pages

Published June 7th 2011 by Ecco (first published June 1st 2011)

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Deferred Gratification: 2011's Most Eagerly Awaited New Books

46th out of 129 books — 382 voters

New York Times 100 Notable Books of 2011

9th out of 100 books — 41 voters

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Aug 06, 2012 Kinga rated it 3 of 5 stars

“Ten Thousand Saints” is a coming of age story that’s close enough to “A Visit from the Goon Squad” but not as amazingly brilliant and a tiny bit like “Freedom” but luckily devoid of Franzen’s annoying self-importance.

If you grew up in the 80’s somewhere on the East Coast of the US, you will be able to relate to this book, especially if your growing up involved drugs, teenage pregnancies, overdosing, AIDS, rock bands or Straight Edge movement. If your adolescence was more conservative you can re...more “Ten Thousand Saints” is a coming of age story that’s close enough to “A Visit from the Goon Squad” but not as amazingly brilliant and a tiny bit like “Freedom” but luckily devoid of Franzen’s annoying self-importance.

If you grew up in the 80’s somewhere on the East Coast of the US, you will be able to relate to this book, especially if your growing up involved drugs, teenage pregnancies, overdosing, AIDS, rock bands or Straight Edge movement. If your adolescence was more conservative you can read this novel to learn all about what you missed out on.

In the end it doesn’t matter what you did as a teenager. It’s just a phase of our lives when we think everything is so bloody important but eventually we get over it, just like did the characters from ‘Ten Thousand Saints’ and just like did the whole city. New York got over the 80’s, the punk rock, the needles and crack vials.

The book’s strength comes from its portrait of the Straight Edge movement which on the surface seemed really different from anything that teenagers did but in reality it has the same extreme and obsessive quality to it that everything else that teenagers so often abandon themselves to. It’s just another way to rebel against your parents, because let’s remember that we’re talking about the generation who had hippies for parents.

Reading about sixteen year old Teddy’s death and its effect on lives of three teenagers is sure to cure your from any nostalgia you might’ve had about your high school times, because being a teenager is a dirty and emotional affair.

The writing in “Ten Thousand Saints” is very cinematographic when it comes to describe the scene but occasionally fails to create the atmosphere, so the New York we see is more of a youtube video than a truly detailed picture. Yet, if the subject interests you, I’d certainly recommend it. It is not a bad effort for a debut and it seems that Henderson might have more talent than it shows here, so look out for her in the future.
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May 10, 2013 Dileri rated it 1 of 5 stars

Quite awful. Felt very researched and didn't ring true for me at all. The writer throws so many topics and problems at the characters and none of them seem probable or get resolved in any sort of satisfactory way. At least I didn't spend too much time on it.

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Feb 12, 2012 Amy rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: shelve-it

What did this book want to be? Who knows? Henderson throws everything at this book (adoption, teen pregnancy, AIDS, absent parents, drugs, jock-bullies, damaged lower classes, damaged upper classes, FAS, ODing, straight edge movement, homosexuality,etc.) but the kitchen sink. After almost 400 pages & all the hard issues Henderson tackles, the book left me with not much to think about. Why? Because Henderson didn't focus on any one thing, she just keeps throwing out more problems & improb...more

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Sep 03, 2012 Marc rated it 3 of 5 stars

Reading the first few pages, I found myself squirming at the prospect of 300 more pages of another coming of age story, this time about a brooding, teenage protagonist that gets high on cleaning products and tailpipes, and his journey to “find himself” after the loss of his friend, another unlikeable loser named Teddy. But after the first couple chapters of your standard young adult fiction fare (forced urine drinking and adolescent coke snorting) the story fortunately took a turn for the better...more

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May 04, 2012 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Before reading:

This is the first novel of a talented woman who I became friends with when we were both knee-high, running down a dirt road in Florida chasing our bigger brothers. I am terrifically proud of her and can't wait for my copy to arrive in the mail.

After reading:

So, with a full disclaimer that I know and love the author, here's what I thought:

I have to admit, a book about punk rockers, NYC, drugs, and straight edge (which was a totally new concept to me) is not really in my realm of ex...more

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Nov 15, 2011 Scott rated it 2 of 5 stars

Yeah, I wasn't really convinced by Eleanor Henderson's too-long debut novel, set in New York City and southern Vermont in the early 1980s and starring a bunch of teenagers who, at various points, lose their virginity, smoke a lot of weed, huff freon, have a baby, get abandoned by their parents, die, live in Alphabet City squats, get AIDS, get tattoos, get in fights, and, for a big chunk of the book, play in a straight edge band and espouse the whole don't drink/smoke/fuck (also, here: /eat meat)...more

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Aug 18, 2012 Vic rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book got rave reviews. One of five in the New York Times best for 2011. It was a good read. I went through it in a matter of days.

Spoiler alert: The following discusses plot and character.

At the very beginning you learn that one of two boys, Teddy, is going to die within the day. Basically a good kid with a bad one, the bad one having him doing drugs including glue and Freon type things to get high and the kid dies. But, not before he has his first sex with a girl, Eliza, who is high on coc...more

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Aug 03, 2012 Ciara rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012

i read this book solely because part of the plot hinged on hardcore straight-edge punks, & i was like, "whaaaaat?" i wanted to see exactly how that took shape & how the author handled it. & i must say, well done! she did a really nice job of capturing (my preconceptions of) the atmosphere of the lower east side squatter scene before new york started getting crazy gentrified.

i will also say that this is another novel i picked up in order to give myself a break from reading nothing bu...more i read this book solely because part of the plot hinged on hardcore straight-edge punks, & i was like, "whaaaaat?" i wanted to see exactly how that took shape & how the author handled it. & i must say, well done! she did a really nice job of capturing (my preconceptions of) the atmosphere of the lower east side squatter scene before new york started getting crazy gentrified.

i will also say that this is another novel i picked up in order to give myself a break from reading nothing but books about babies/pregnancy/birth/etc. & wouldn't you fucking know it? one of the very few prominent female characters in the book gets pregnant & a huge chunk of the plot is all about her pregnancy & who is going to step up to be a father figure to the kid once it is born (because it's actual father dies, like, the night of conception).

let's see if i can remember the plot: teenage boy lives with hippie parents in vermont. he's kind of a rapscallion, all into skateboarding & huffing & stuff. he & his BFF go to a party one night, accompanied by the hippie kid's father's girlfriend's foxy teenage daughter. teenage daughter does cocke with the friend & they bone in the bathroom. hippie kid & friend proceed to pass out in the snow. friend dies. hippie kid kind of goes bananas & finds solace in the straight-edge scene, to which he is introduced by dead friend's extremely hardcore older brother. teenage daughter is knocked up & they tell the parental figures that hardcore older brother is the dad. there's all this stuff with protests in tompkins square park & going on tour...i don't know. once the characters are established, things get a little plotless, i guess. everyone is just kind of waiting around for teenage daughter to give birth. as a pregnant lady myself, i can vouch for the fact that this process is kind of a huge snore.

i liked it, i guess? i mean, seriously probably just because i am a sucker for stuff about underground punk scenes that seem like they were written by someone who actually knows anything about it. like, at one point, the punks all collaborate on a zine together! i was like, whoa, zines! it's hard for me to imagine someone like...i don't know, my partner's mom, or my therapist or someone, reading this book & being really into it though. i just don't know who the audience is.(less)

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Jul 25, 2012 Laura rated it 5 of 5 stars

I couldn't wait to write this review because I was so impressed with this book by the time I finished the first two chapters. This is the kind of book I'm going to be thinking about for a long time, the kind of book I was looking forward to reading and stayed up late in the night. This is realist fiction at its best. I loved these characters and their heartbreakingly stupid decisions. I loved how they kept doing all the wrong things and, through sheer grace, also doing all the right things. It w...more

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May 18, 2012 Kate rated it 4 of 5 stars

A coming-of-age novel that doesn’t pull many punches, Ten Thousand Saints opens with Jude and Teddy getting high under the bleachers of their Vermont high school in 1987, dreaming of escape. When Teddy’s half-step-sister, Eliza, arrives for New Years Eve from distant, thrilling NYC, events are set in motion that will change all of their lives forever, as an unfortunate cocktail of drugs at a party means that Teddy doesn’t live to see ’88 (not a spoiler – this is given away pretty early on). The...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Maggie Wyatt rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-2012

I chose this book because the NYtime listed it as one of the top 5 books of 2011. When I started it, I had my doubts--a story about teenage boys who were druggies set in the 80's was not really in my zone of interest. But I found myself quickly drawn in and actually finished the book in 3 days. There were some superficial coincidences and solutions, but the characters and their struggles seemed real to me. There were so many conflicts: the rejection felt by children who feel abandoned by a paren...more

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Mar 25, 2012 Tyler Barton rated it 5 of 5 stars

I may be partial to this coming-of-age epic because of that fact that it's backdrop is the 1980's straightedge-hardcore movement, but I honestly think this is the best YA novel I have ever read.
First, It holds nothing back. It does not pander to censorship and it isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Henderson knows that teens are aware of drugs, sex, homosexuality and diseases like FAS and AIDS. She isn't attempting to hide anything from the reader. However, if there are themes in the book that...more I may be partial to this coming-of-age epic because of that fact that it's backdrop is the 1980's straightedge-hardcore movement, but I honestly think this is the best YA novel I have ever read.
First, It holds nothing back. It does not pander to censorship and it isn't afraid to tell it like it is. Henderson knows that teens are aware of drugs, sex, homosexuality and diseases like FAS and AIDS. She isn't attempting to hide anything from the reader. However, if there are themes in the book that the reader may be unfamiliar with, she does a beautiful job of explaining these things through her story. Her writing style is unique and descriptive. Her poetic voice will not leave you feeling bored or unemotional.

The story is an epic journey and it is about the coming of age of not only it's main character, 15 year old Jude Heffy-Korn, but of almost every other character. Jude finds, through the death of his best friend Teddy (from over-dosing), and his search for his father, straight-edge (no drugs, sex, or alcohol). This is a movement that was popularized in the 80's and which still exists today. Although this transformation in Jude's life seems like a good example for many teens, Henderson never allows herself to come off as didactic or preachy. Jude battles with straight-edge and it's negative associations as well as the negative associations of the drug-life that Jude and his friends had previously lead.

Henderson is also extremely accurate in her portrayal of NYC in the 80's, the hardcore-punk scene at that time, and the straight-edge movement. She did her research, and anyone who knows anything about these subject will appreciate that.

Back to the story: it is long and it has a lot of stages, elements, and changes. This may be off-putting for some readers but it is the reason I feel that it is of "epic" nature. Characters like the pregnant Eliza, the homosexual hardcore punker Johhny, and Jude's parents all go through changes that are realistic, beautiful, beautiful and often-times unexpected.

Overall, I would recommend this book to almost anyone, but especially to high-school aged students. It's a heavy tale about growing up and making your own, important decisions.

Also, it can't hurt to expose our young ones to some straight-edge influence. (less)

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Jan 22, 2012 Eric Kibler rated it 3 of 5 stars

It's a decent coming of age novel set in the late 80s, having as a backdrop the hardcore punk scene at the time, specifically, the "straight edge" movement. Straight edge rockers didn't smoke, drink, or do drugs, and tried to abstain from sex as well.

When we first meet Jude and his best friend Teddy, they are anything but straight edge: snorting, smoking and huffing everything in sight. But when Teddy dies (I'm not giving anything away--you find out on the first page that he's doomed), Jude slow...more

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Jan 11, 2012 Toni rated it 5 of 5 stars

I think I will be gushing about this book for quite some time. It's definitely my new one-size-fits-all book recommendation -- I basically can't conceptualize who out there wouldn't love it. It's a coming-of-age story, many times over, set against the backdrop the late-1980's hardcore punk / straightedge scene, in a long-gone New York. And it just has so much heart, and is so meticulously constructed, and tells such doozy of a story. After I finished it, I went back and reread the New York Times...more

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Jan 11, 2012 John rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: fiction

In "Ten Thousand Saints" Eleanor Henderson has written the quintessential novel of New York City's East Village in the late 1980s. She truly has breathed life into the East Village's recent storied past, and has transformed that neighborhood into a character as vividly realized as her novel's people. She has rendered for the reader a most memorable fictional walking tour through East Village, allowing oneself to become attuned almost immediately to its distinctive sights and sounds. While some h...more In "Ten Thousand Saints" Eleanor Henderson has written the quintessential novel of New York City's East Village in the late 1980s. She truly has breathed life into the East Village's recent storied past, and has transformed that neighborhood into a character as vividly realized as her novel's people. She has rendered for the reader a most memorable fictional walking tour through East Village, allowing oneself to become attuned almost immediately to its distinctive sights and sounds. While some have compared it favorably with Jonathan Lethem's "Fortress of Solitude", Henderson's novel is a far more compelling, far more engrossing and far more successful depiction of the East Village than I have seen from Lethem's fictional portrayals of Brooklyn. Hers is a novel replete with flawed, quite captivating, characters, but these are ones who will linger long in your memory thanks to her elegant prose, so rich in its sincerity and compelling descriptions of its characters, especially the adolescents who are this novel's main protagonists. "Ten Thousand Saints" is a superb blend of personal odyssey and coming of age, perhaps our generation's "Catcher in the Rye".

The wayward adopted son of two hippie parents, Jude Keffry-Horn seems destined to follow in his father's footsteps as a juvenile pot-smoking junkie in a rural Vermont town dominated by his fellow lawless troubled teens. When his best friend Teddy succumbs to a drug overdose, Jude embarks on a personal odyssey back to the city of his birth where he will find salvation via punk music, the East Village's skinhead culture and his friendships with Teddy's brother Johnny, and Eliza, the sophisticated daughter of Di, a former ballerina and his father Les's long-time girlfriend. Yet it is an odyssey fraught with peril that begins tragically with Teddy's death and yet, ends most promisingly, in an unexpected pregnancy and birth. In "Ten Thousand Saints" Henderson has not only written a mesmerizing literary debut, but also one that definitely ranks among this year's best American novels.

(Reposted from my 2011 Amazon review)(less)

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Jan 05, 2012 Sorayya Khan rated it 5 of 5 stars

Eleanor Henderson's Ten Thousand Saints is the perfect example of how really excellent fiction is universal. I was not, at the outset, interested in the straight-edge music scene of the 1980s, an odd off-shoot of the punk music scene (in fact, I knew nothing about it), yet the beautiful rendering of Henderson's story pulled me into a world I did not know I cared about. The novel is, plain and simple, a story of devotion--to family, to friendship, to music, to teenage bonds, to love, to survival....more

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Jan 03, 2012 Linda Lackey rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was an unexpected surprise from David for Christmas. I think he selected it for me because it is reminiscent of my son's high school straight edge, tattoo fascination days. The novel begins with the fatal drug overdose of a high school boy, Teddy, on New Year's eve. Teddy and his best friend, Jude, ended up at a party with Eliza, who gives Teddy cocaine and becomes pregnant with Teddy's child before his body is found the next morning. The novel seemed a bit preachy in places - certainl...more

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Dec 29, 2011 christa rated it 3 of 5 stars

Eleanor Henderson’s novel “Ten Thousand Saints” starts with a condensed version of the one-crazy-night premise from which entire films are built. It’s a lazy New Year’s Eve day of smoking, huffing, drinking and snorting for Teddy and Jude. The inseparable teen-aged besties are skateboarders with next to no social currency. Teddy’s mom has skipped town and he’s probably been lied to that his dad is dead. Jude was adopted and lives with his hippie mom, who is a glassblower, and his kind of bitchy...more Eleanor Henderson’s novel “Ten Thousand Saints” starts with a condensed version of the one-crazy-night premise from which entire films are built. It’s a lazy New Year’s Eve day of smoking, huffing, drinking and snorting for Teddy and Jude. The inseparable teen-aged besties are skateboarders with next to no social currency. Teddy’s mom has skipped town and he’s probably been lied to that his dad is dead. Jude was adopted and lives with his hippie mom, who is a glassblower, and his kind of bitchy barely-younger sister. His adoptive father ditched out years ago and lives in New York City, where he is hot and heavy with a former ballerina who has a cocaine-curious high-school aged daughter, Eliza. Eliza is planning her first visit to the boys’ small Vermont town to meet the not-quite step brother.

The trio ends up at a party where Jude’s mouth gets him in trouble with some older kids. While he’s getting bound and urine-stained, Teddy is in the bathroom having his first go-round with both Coke and sex. Later that night he will take a few puffs off something poisonous, following Jude’s lead, and die. Meanwhile, somewhere in Eliza’s lady parts, sperm meets egg.

Jude goes a little crazy, first drowning himself in weed, then pissing off a dealer and high-tailing it for New York City, finding Teddy’s older brother and adopting a straight-edge lifestyle complete with a homemade X tattoo on his hand. Preggers Eliza joins the threesome and develops a faux relationship with one of the boys. This all turns into a portrait of NYC’s straight-edge scene, the vegan, no-drugs, no-drinking, no-caffeine group that is making its way through this sub-set of the rock ‘n’ roll scene while also touching on the topic of AIDS.

This book is … okay-ish. It’s a lot of back and forth -- from Vermont to New York and back to Vermont and then New York. Travel always seems so unnecessary in novels, just something to do to characters to throw them into a new situation. Plus there are some weird turns. Jude learns he might have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome -- though it doesn’t play into anything. The band goes on a half-assed tour. Teddy’s older brother takes up the issue of New York City’s proposed curfew. I don’t know. I’d watch this movie on a lazy Saturday afternoon and it wouldn’t result in self-loathing over the wasted day. But mostly it was just okay. (less)

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Nov 28, 2011 Kristin Strong rated it 4 of 5 stars

I saw this recommended someplace...of course, I can't remember where now. I requested it from our local library and, upon reading the jacket copy, put it at the bottom of the stack of books I'd brought home. I thought it would be the least engaging of the three books I planned to read.

Much to my surprise, once I started reading it, I could not put it down. Before I started the book, I thought the action took place in a milieu and among people I couldn't relate to. But Eleanor Henderson makes her...more

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Nov 13, 2011 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars

I had heard good things about this book, but wasn't sure I'd be interested in the coming-of-age story of straight edge teens in the late 1980s New York City. Boy, was I wrong.
Henderson has such compassion for her characters- Jude, the drug-using boy in love with a girl who slept with his best friend Teddy, Eliza, the lost rich girl with a secret, Johnny, Teddy's straight edge musician brother hiding from himself- that you feel like you know these people and care deeply about what happens to them...more I had heard good things about this book, but wasn't sure I'd be interested in the coming-of-age story of straight edge teens in the late 1980s New York City. Boy, was I wrong.
Henderson has such compassion for her characters- Jude, the drug-using boy in love with a girl who slept with his best friend Teddy, Eliza, the lost rich girl with a secret, Johnny, Teddy's straight edge musician brother hiding from himself- that you feel like you know these people and care deeply about what happens to them. Even Teddy, who only exists for 72 pages yet whose presence influences all of the main characters, is so vivid, I felt I knew him well.

The minor characters are well drawn too; I particularly liked Jude's estranged father who left his family behind years ago, and although he faithfully sent support checks, checked out of his son and daughter's emotional life. Henderson has created this world that I had no idea about, the straight edge world of young people living in poverty on the Lower East Side of New York City in the late 1980s. It was a much different world there than it is today. They live with the homeless, violence and drug dealers in Tompkins Park, and with the fear and ignorance spawned by the AIDS epidemic.

There is one scene, a fight scene, that echoes S.E. Hinton's classic book, "The Outsiders", and I loved her homage to that story about teens also on the outside of mainstream society. (One of the characters even mentions the book later in the story.) This book will appeal to all of us who grew up loving "The Outsiders".

Part of the story takes place in Vermont, and Henderson creates that world with as much care. I felt like I was dropped into this story, these worlds that I knew little about. Great fiction can open up your mind and heart to characters and new ideas, and "Ten Thousand Saints" is great fiction. It is one of the best books I have read this year, and i can't wait for more from Eleanor Henderson.

I read this book in two sittings, I just couldn't put it down. These characters manage to crawl inside your heart, and when they make bad decisions and mess things up, you just want to hug them and tell them it will be alright.(less)

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Oct 11, 2011 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: indiespensable

Ten Thousand Saints starts out like it could have been written by a fourteen-year-old girl. The tragic death of a teenage boy is somehow mitigated when the pregnancy resulting from a drug-addled one night hookup means that his memory will live on forever! Our young heroine, Eliza, cheerfully goes on using cocaine for half a pregnancy, but heaven help anyone who suggests she might not make the best parent. After all, the dead boy's best friend and half brother can take care of her, and how could...more

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Jul 24, 2011 Bob Mustin rated it 2 of 5 stars

This story, about a group of doper friends (I'm forced to use the term friends loosely) who seem to be driven only by the next bag of weed, fumble through their teen years to what used to be in an earlier age, adulthood. Here, the term doesn't seem to apply as it might to earlier ages, in which coming of age meant, you know, putting away childish things for adult reasons.
Jude, who is Henderson's main character, forsakes dope and other chemical entertainments for membership in a group called str...more This story, about a group of doper friends (I'm forced to use the term friends loosely) who seem to be driven only by the next bag of weed, fumble through their teen years to what used to be in an earlier age, adulthood. Here, the term doesn't seem to apply as it might to earlier ages, in which coming of age meant, you know, putting away childish things for adult reasons.
Jude, who is Henderson's main character, forsakes dope and other chemical entertainments for membership in a group called straight edge. In another era, the children of James Dean or Marlon Brando would have taken up tobacco and booze and fast cars and motorcycles as their way of pushing off against their parents and any other authority figures who might've irritated the fragilely developed personalities of teen-hood. But these kids are the progeny of indulgent parents, some dopers themselves. So where else to go but straight? An interesting premise, really.
Along the way - and I won't delve into Henderson's overstuffed cast - Jude gains a slowly fructifying case of the hots for Eliza, maven of cocaine, who turns up pregnant. She's adamant about hanging onto Johnny, you see, who must've knocked her up. But she finally tires of her jones for Johnny and opts -assumedly in any-port-in-a-storm fashion, for Jude. There. I've ruined the story for you, haven't I?

What has me so acerbic about this book? Disappointment, more than anything else. There is, I suppose, a form of coming of age for both Jude and Eliza, but it's more a case of growing fatigued by the dope-and-sex-and-rock scene. One has to assume that biology kicks in for them here, not hard decisions made from maturing emotions and intellect. There's no real growing up odyssey, as Henderson has spelled it out for the reader, just a final scene in which the couple exit stage left with babe in arms, somewhat anxious to flee New York's ugliness.

First novels these days, whether lauded to max as this one is destined to be, or quietly simmering as the author gathers an audience, seem to be an apprenticeship that in the long-lost days of the publishing industry was spent in the counsel of agent and editor, and perhaps writing group. I'm not implying Henderson has no talent; to the contrary, she has a way with words, although sometimes her tautly carved phrases seem to be working too hard at their job.
My problem here is the same as with many young writers with talent - they have the writerly chops, but their views of life are as if through a keyhole, i.e., with the myopia of teen age and lack of a life experience that would allow them to see, and write, their microcosmic stories and characters within the grander scheme of things.
As a result, the characters here seem such doofuses that the author has to occasionally come to their rescue with a bit of explanatory narrative. Hopefully, the second novel will show the maturity Henderson's talent deserves.(less)

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Jul 23, 2011 Elaine Lincoln rated it 2 of 5 stars

This was well-written, but ultimately I had a problem with the book: it seemed the author backed off from showing the scenes of transformation that comprise the book. We see that Jude has adopted the straight edge lifestyle, but we don't see the months when this happens; we just see him after the fact. We see Johnny and Rooster in crisis, we're very invested in them, and then they just disappear. And there are other dropped threads, like Jude's FAS, which don't ever amount to anything. Most frus...more

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Jul 08, 2011 Dan rated it 5 of 5 stars

This is the best contemporary novel I've read in years. I dreaded reading it - the New York Times review was absurdly congratulatory, which riled up the contrarian in me. The subject matter is "straight-edge punk." Generally, I hate books focused on music, because the author tries to rely on feelings he or she has about music that don't translate on the page. I only read the book because the review said it started in 1987, the first year of my yet-to-be published novel. It turns out that the onl...more

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Jul 03, 2011 Felice rated it 4 of 5 stars

Wow. I never would have thought of myself as the audience for TenThousand Saints.This is a novel about leftover hippies, yuppie invasions, pot sellers, zines, militant punks, AIDS, Vermont and New York City in the 1980's but this vigorous, imaginative, debut novel by Eleanor Henderson is packed with authenticity and mature storytelling.

Ten Thousand Saints is the story of Jude Keffy-Horn. He was raised by adoptive, divorced, hippy parents in a small city in Vermont. On the last day of 1987 Jude’...more Wow. I never would have thought of myself as the audience for TenThousand Saints.This is a novel about leftover hippies, yuppie invasions, pot sellers, zines, militant punks, AIDS, Vermont and New York City in the 1980's but this vigorous, imaginative, debut novel by Eleanor Henderson is packed with authenticity and mature storytelling.

Ten Thousand Saints is the story of Jude Keffy-Horn. He was raised by adoptive, divorced, hippy parents in a small city in Vermont. On the last day of 1987 Jude’s best friend and partner in getting high, music and skipping school, Teddy, dies of an overdose. He had spent the previous night doing numerous drugs and having sex with Jude’s sort of stepsister, Eliza. Jude and Teddy were just shy of their sixteenth birthdays when this happened. Sixteen was the magical number that meant quitting school and committing completely to getting wasted as often and for as long as possible lifestyle. Teddy's death is a bit of a wake call for Jude's Mother and he is sent to live with his pot farmer Father in NYC.

Surprisingly choosing to surround Jude with endless pot and place him in a city where anything is within arm’s reach does the trick. Jude careens from one extreme to another but instead of an excess of waste and drugs he becomes involved in the straight edge punk scene ( a combo of Hare Krishna and Hindu principles with a dab of cultish-ness mixed in) and embraces the total abstinence of drugs, sex and meat. Jude's parents would rather he be on a continual high than reject their choices with these new addictions but no matter. Jude creates his own family. There is Eliza, a scared prep school dropout who may be pregnant with Teddy's child and Teddy's militantly straight edge brother Johnny, a tattoo artist and musician.

Jude’s new life is centered on three things: honoring Teddy’s memory, music and trying to outrun his parents mistakes. The most prominent manifestation of Teddy is Eliza’s pregnancy. All three: Jude, Eliza and Johnny go to great lengths to try and make sure Eliza can have the baby. Music, forming a band, is a big point of passion in the novel and it is the story’s entrée into much of the pop culture history of the 1980’s.

This is the kind of panoramic novel that is usual to see centered on revolutions and multigenerational sagas about settling the American west. It’s much rarer to see this big vision brought to a relatively small time period and cast but Henderson does just that. She shines a light on this grimy world and the violence of growing up in it for this generation. This is unsentimental, strong storytelling.

Reading Ten Thousands Saints is an engrossing experience. The characters, the dialog and the settings are so wholly believable incarnations the 1980’s that it is like going through a time machine. There are a few moments when the editor could have used a stronger hand but that is a very minor observation, nothing that interferes with your enjoyment with the book. Eleanor Henderson is to be applauded for writing such a vivid, accomplished first novel. (less)

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Jul 02, 2011 Liz rated it 4 of 5 stars

In the first few pages of this book, I was afraid that I wouldn't be able to get into it. But shortly thereafter, I had the exact opposite problem--I couldn't put it down! Set in Vermont and New York City in the late 1980's, "Ten Thousand Saints" focuses on the life of teenager Jude Keffey-Horn and the cast of characters around him. Jude's best friend Teddy dies (this is not a spoiler, as the author lets you know it's coming on the first page), and Jude has to make sense of his life without its...more

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Jun 18, 2011 AJ Conroy marked it as to-read

From NPR Review:
On Aug. 6, 1988, a collection of squatters, anarchists and youths took over Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village to protest a new 1 a.m. curfew. By the time the fated hour rolled around, the gathering had turned violent as police attempted to shut down the park. The crowd was there to protect a neighborhood where, as Eleanor Henderson puts it in Ten Thousand Saints, "there were shadows to hide in. Here you didn't advertise being gay or straight or rich or poor; you j...more From NPR Review:
On Aug. 6, 1988, a collection of squatters, anarchists and youths took over Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan's East Village to protest a new 1 a.m. curfew. By the time the fated hour rolled around, the gathering had turned violent as police attempted to shut down the park. The crowd was there to protect a neighborhood where, as Eleanor Henderson puts it in Ten Thousand Saints, "there were shadows to hide in. Here you didn't advertise being gay or straight or rich or poor; you just tried not to get your ass kicked." Injuries and reports of police brutality abounded.

Henderson picked this era of uneasy change for her sad, funny debut novel about growing up. Ten Thousand Saints opens with the death of 15-year-old Teddy on New Year's Eve 1987, and then follows as the tragedy unhinges the lives of three teenagers: his best friend, Jude, his brother Johnny and his one-night-stand, Eliza.

The novel uses as its backdrop the devastating AIDS crisis, the creeping gentrification of New York City and the straight-edge movement, which, in direct reaction to the excesses of the then-thriving punk scene, advocated for a drug-free, vegetarian lifestyle. Henderson lets these now historic events simmer, giving them little more existential weight than her bored, self-important teenagers would. Indeed, it's Eliza's pregnancy, which the three hold secret for many months, that becomes their purpose and talisman. "They spoke of it with giddiness and gravity, or with panic, or with a sense of duty, but always with breathless disbelief at their unexpected fortune," Henderson writes. Yes, the three appear at the Aug. 6 riot — but only one of them is there to protest, the other two to argue over the future of Eliza's baby.
Eleanor Henderson teaches fiction writing at Ithaca College. This is her first novel.
Ecco

Eleanor Henderson teaches fiction writing at Ithaca College. This is her first novel.

It's heartbreaking to watch this trio clumsily make their way in New York. Each grew up missing one or both parents and, perhaps inevitably, find it easier to blame themselves for their own struggles and sorrows: Johnny for his mother's abandonment, Jude for his friend Teddy's death. It's fitting that the adults in Ten Thousand Saints hover, mostly uselessly, around the edges of the novel, feeling less present, in many cases, than the departed Teddy.

Henderson, who received her MFA in fiction from University of Virginia and now teaches at Ithaca College, captures the fraught, incomplete stories that teenagers manufacture about their lives. After meeting his estranged dad, Johnny feels a false rush of assurance, "like a son, as though he had a mother and a father, parents who were screwed up in a legendary, acceptable way." (Perhaps it's this fantasy of domesticity that stirs Johnny to, for all the wrong reasons, marry Eliza.) And in the absence of a coherent family, music provides the illusion of one for Jude, who becomes a guitarist in a straight-edge band, taking to the road on tour because "bands weren't just bands. They were troops. They were tribes."

Henderson's novel reminds us of how blunt teenagers are, and, by extension, how honest. She has a perfect ear for conversation between siblings — the way a lazy spat can turn into a grudging moment of closeness. And the euphoria of the straight-edge movement that Jude and Johnny embrace suffuses the novel with a reckless, glib joy. (See their roadie's essay, "How I Spend My Summer Vacation".) At times, Ten Thousand Saints feels overplotted, as if the author had let her cast of love-and-drug-besotted misfits take the reins. But that haphazardness paired with the sometime painful teenage rites of passage, adds up to a bittersweet, lovely book.(less)

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May 21, 2011 Lindsay Gray rated it 5 of 5 stars

I absolutely loved this book. Henderson's debut novel is spectacularly written and the characters are insanely real. It's as if she wrote the novel sitting in the tour van or the basement of Jude's mom's house while hanging out with these kids.

As someone who spent their teenage years going to shows and drawing X's on her hands, I really related to the kids in this book. While the bulk of the novel follows a group of straight-edge teenagers, it never comes off as remotely preachy. It's not about...more

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Mar 24, 2011 Nathan rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: lies, new-y0rk, this-20th-century

This book felt fresh to me, and I think it's because although it's set against a very particular bit of cultural history - the straightedge punk movement of the late 80s, and the Lower East Side neighborhood in which it took root - the story never goes exactly where I expected it to. It's by turns a book about a band, a teenage love-and-drugs-and-sex story, a domestic melodrama, a kids-on-a-quest story, and a historical novel about New York in the 80s. It could have been disjointed and unfocused...more

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Jun 03, 2012 Larry Hoffer rated it 5 of 5 stars

Jude and Teddy are childhood friends growing up in Vermont in the late 1980s. They do nearly everything together—cut school, take drugs, steal, listen to and play hardcore music, and dream of a "real life" away from what they know. Teddy's mother has just disappeared, leaving him to fend for himself and turn to Jude and his family for support. On New Year's Eve, Teddy and Jude meet up with Eliza, the daughter of Jude's father's girlfriend, and they take her to a party in search of fun and drugs...more Jude and Teddy are childhood friends growing up in Vermont in the late 1980s. They do nearly everything together—cut school, take drugs, steal, listen to and play hardcore music, and dream of a "real life" away from what they know. Teddy's mother has just disappeared, leaving him to fend for himself and turn to Jude and his family for support. On New Year's Eve, Teddy and Jude meet up with Eliza, the daughter of Jude's father's girlfriend, and they take her to a party in search of fun and drugs (although not necessarily in that order). The party turns their lives upside down in more ways than one, and after they put Eliza back on a train to New York City, Teddy dies of an accidental drug overdose.

Overcome with grief over the death of his best friend, yet unable to express himself, Jude heads to New York and finds Johnny, Teddy's straight-edge half-brother. (Straight-edge kids swear off drugs, alcohol, sex, and often meat, but follow the hardcore punk scene.) When they find out that Eliza is pregnant with Teddy's child from their encounter at the party the night he died, Johnny sees this as a chance to form a real family, one that has escaped him for so long. Yet he must deal with the demons inside himself, as well as Jude's jealousy, on so many different levels. This is a book about finding yourself and realizing what makes a family, about the hardcore music scene of the late 1980s and the changing demographics of New York City, and about trying to avoid making the same mistakes your parents made.

I thought this book was pretty fantastic. Eleanor Henderson created some truly memorable characters and gave each surprising depth, which made me feel truly invested in what happened to them. There were a few times I worried the book would veer into overly dramatic plot twists, but each time, Henderson remained true to the characters and her story, and I was grateful for that. No one is infallible in this book, much as in life, and that is what made the story so appealing to me—although I couldn't necessarily identify with all of the characters and what they were going through, I felt as if all of the characters were realistic, particularly to the places and time in which the book took place. I flew through this book and of course, I'm sorry I finished it so quickly, because I want more. But I look forward to seeing what Henderson comes up with next! (less)

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“Jude's desire for girls was indiscriminate feverish and complete he wanted them all equally and he wanted them not at all. Blondes and brunettes big ones or small ones - they were cold fragile impenetrable creatures all desirable as they were undesirable all perfumed and pretty.” — 3 people liked it

“He, Teddy and Eliza entered the room just as someone was snapping a picture: they would be forever captured in a photo they didn't belong in, blinking against the flash.” — 2 people liked it

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