You Deserve Nothing

by Alexander Maksik

Set in Paris, at an international high school catering to the sons and daughters of wealthy families, You Deserve Nothing is a gripping story of power, idealism, and morality.

William Silver is a talented and charismatic young teacher whose unconventional methods raise eyebrows among his colleagues and superiors. His students, however, are devoted to him. His teaching of Camus, Faulkner, Sartre, Keats and other kindred souls breathe life into their sense of social justice and their capacities for philosophical and ethical thought. But unbeknownst to his adoring pupils, Silver proves incapable of living up to the ideals he encourages in others. Emotionally scarred by failures in his personal life and driven to distraction by the City of Light's overpowering carnality and beauty, Silver succumbs to a temptation that will change the course of his life. His fall will render him a criminal in the eyes of some, and all too human in the eyes of others.

In Maksik's stylish prose, Paris is sensual, dazzling and dangerously seductive. It serves as a fitting backdrop for a dramatic tale about the tension between desire and action, and about the complex relationship that exists between our public and private selves.

Genres: Fiction, Contemporary, France, Literary Fiction, Novels, Book Club, Literature

336 pages, Paperback

First published August 30, 2011

About the author

Alexander Maksik is the author of four novels: You Deserve Nothing, a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller; A Marker to Measure Drift, which was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a finalist for the William Saroyan Prize and Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Shelter in Place, named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle and The Long Corner, which will be published in 2022.

Maksik’s writing has appeared in many publications including Harper’s, The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Sewanee Review, Harvard Review, New York Times Book Review, Condé Nast Traveler (where for several years he was a contributing editor) and The Atlantic, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Andrew Lytle Prize, as well as fellowships from the Truman Capote Literary Trust and the Corporation of Yaddo.

Along with French novelist Colombe Schneck, he is the co-artistic director of the Can Cab Literary Residence in Catalonia, Spain.

Reviews

[Jeanette (Ms. Feisty)]

UPDATE: November 29, 2011
Turns out this book really was based on the author's transgressions. The Will Silver character is Maksik himself.
http://jezebel.com/5863188/how-a-teac...

With this new development, I'm going to leave the book without a rating. Here is my original four-star review:

Bleak but mighty impressive.

Teacher worship. Is there anything more universal or more potentially devastating? At the International School of France, Will Silver is a beloved teacher with two especially worshipful students. One is a female, Marie, who worships him sexually and fantasizes future domestic bliss with him. The other is a male, Gilad, who worships Silver as the pinnacle of intellectual and moral uprightness, and fantasizes about being singled out by his teacher as special.

Silver teaches high-minded philosophical principles in his classes, and his teenaged students naively expect him to be the embodiment of those principles. Of course, he's just a man. Sometimes weak, sometimes strong, admirable in some ways and despicable in others.

Silver is also very much in need of sexual release, which turns out to be his downfall.
Don't act so surprised. That's never happened before, right? Somehow it's more disappointing when Silver falls from grace, because he's not the initiator and he just lets it all happen without so much as a whimper.
And after ten years of teaching, is he really naive enough to think that high school students don't spill all to their friends? Which leaves you wondering---does he really care if it all goes down the drain? Is he deliberately self-destructing?

There are echoes here of Dead Poets Society and The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. A beloved, unconventional teacher gets too chummy with the students and is eventually betrayed by one of them, leaving the rest of the students feeling betrayed by the teacher.

Adoration from young people is intoxicating and hard to resist, as is the possibility of shaping young minds and lives. Reading an all-too-believable story like this one just makes me more appreciative of those instructors I had who knew where to draw the line between themselves and their students, and were perhaps less popular for doing so.

The title, You Deserve Nothing, sounds bleak, and it is. It alludes to the argument that what you get in life is not necessarily based on merit. The good things we do today do not ensure that we will have good experiences in the future. Good and bad things that happen to us are not always a matter of deserving or having earned them.

[Jill · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Oh my god."

That phrase.
Say it one way, it's shock, subversion.
Another, it's excitement, possibility.
But if you're saying it over. And over. And over. Out loud. While reading alone. It becomes, was only ever, goddamn fucking exasperation.

This book was a goddamn fucking exasperation.

-----

Alright. Disclaimer: I am a teacher. This book is about a teacher, a very specific kind, you know the one -- the dreamy male high school English teacher who changes your life and hates the system and wears blazers and carries a stylish bookbag and talks about philosophy.

I have always desperately hated these kinds of English teachers.
I also desperately hope that I am changing (a few of) my students' lives. I hate the system and wear blazers and force Nietzsche down throats and I bought a really cute blue vinyl bag recently.

So: William Silver. Dead Poets Society guy. All you other examples of this archetype.
Am I jealous of you? Does my hatred come from a place of envy, of insecurity? Do I feel encroached upon?
Or am I truly, deeply, frustrated with the act -- because it is, so often, a goddamn act?

Both. I think.

-------

The plot of You Deserve Nothing can essentially be summarized in a sentence: fucked up but idolized high school teacher has a torrid affair with a student. You've heard this story before, guys -- it's not new, it's not innovative. It's revolting, in fact, and admittedly I found it hard to get past -- very little bothers me more deeply than teachers abusing their power, particularly sexually.

But here's why this book fails: it does not, not once, truly recognize that the relationship between Will and Marie is an abuse of power.

Know why?

Because every fucking character in the book is obsessed beyond reason with Will Silver.

Take, for example, the character of Gilad -- who gets his own first person narrative, running parallel with Will and Marie's. You'd think, if nothing else, that Gilad would offer a foil. Will's obsessed with himself, Marie is obsessed with Will, every other student and teacher in the book keeps referencing how amazing Will is and how incredible and perfect and flawless and life-changing and listen, listen: a GOOD book would have had the third narrative offer an alternate perspective. Something aside from hero-worship.

But literally all Gilad does is hero-worship Silver. That's it. Even when Silver "fails" him, Gilad continues referencing proud looks and Silverisms. There is nothing to Gilad's character except that he likes being alone, his parents kinda suck, and he loves every word that comes out of Silver's mouth. Nothing else. This is when the "oh my god"s started -- Gilad is unbelievable, in the literal sense. He mentally fellates Silver constantly, exemplifying the SENPAI NOTICE ME! meme in every sense, to the point where he's a caricature.

And hey, in any other book -- fine. Whatever. It's just bad writing. But here, it's damaging. Because there are real issues being discussed -- issues of ethics and power and lust -- and NO ONE is offering a foil to Silver's megalomania.

If it was mentioned. Once. By anyone. That he was a legitimately bad teacher, or that his style didn't work, or that he was taking advantage of Marie --- but it's not. When he's fired for sleeping with a student, the people who say these things are painted as villains by both Will & Marie. The rest of the characters sadly mourn his departure.

I'm sorry.

Shall I bold it?

He slept with a fucking student.

There is no excuse. He really does deserve nothing. But the book is an exercize in self-fellation, and the impression you're left with is that Silver has truly changed lives and done beautiful things, and maybe he's the worst, but in a lot of ways, he's still the best.

--------

Maybe this is all intentional, you're saying -- maybe Maksik knew exactly what he was doing. Maybe the point is to show Silver's narcissism and failure to understand everything around him.

Okay, I reply: then why the fuck have three separate FIRST PERSON voices?! The ONLY REASON is to show ALTERNATE PERSPECTIVES on an issue. For all three of these people to have the EXACT SAME PERSPECTIVE: i.e. swept away by Will Silver's goddamn GENIUS~~~---- no. I'm sorry. I don't buy it. If nothing else, it's bad writing; terrible understanding of form.

And if Silver is a self-insert for Maksik -- well. That is another thing entirely.



This book is compulsively readable (I was up till 1am the night before parent-teacher interviews devouring it). It raises interesting questions, but it does so ineffectively and, at times, offensively. With Marie's characterization, it completely sidesteps issues of consent and power structures. And you know what -- you could make excuses for this book. You could point to Will's (again, self-fellating) transcribed lectures, which so deeply change the lives of every student to encounter them, and probably find moments where the book hangs a lantern on its failings.

But let me tell you right now: it is not worth it. Because if you are going to write a book like this in the 21st century, and voice the teenage girl as a fucking seductress, and never really deal with the fallout: you are wrong. You are, plainly, wrong.

And this book is wrong. No characters are believable. No actions are justifiable. It is a mess, a sad, exasperating mess, just like Silver's life.

Yes: that's the point.

But it's not a good point, and it's not one you need to hear made in this particular way. Instead -- go watch the excellent series Rita on Netflix.

-------

I'm writing this review in my classroom, my blue vinyl bag beside me. I finished this book sitting at my desk in between interviews. I feel sick looking at the school photos of students on my wall just above my monitor, as I type this, thinking of the possibility of this happening to any of them.

So this is personal; I realize that. But a book that amounts to hero worship of a molester, with very little to redeem it aside from decent writing ------

Maybe I'm too close to it.

And like Silver (how deeply I hope I am like him in some ways, how completely I would despise myself if that were true in others) -- I welcome dispute.

[Danielle McClellan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this novel with no background information and loved it. Intelligent, reflective, beautifully written, excellent characters. Came on over to Goodreads to write my rave review and for the first time saw other reviews that reference the fact that this is based on a true story by an author who was himself dismissed from the same international school as his main character for the same reason (a relationship with a student). Spent a bit of time mulling the matter over before deciding that this new biographical information does not change my assessment of the novel. Martin Amis once said that “fiction is the only way to redeem the formlessness of life,” and even if it is true that scenes and characters in this novel correspond closely to those remembered and reconstructed by others, this author has ultimately transformed a disparate series of events into something more, something with shape and substance. (Mr. Amis is a great example of an author I find fairly distasteful as a human being, but whom I deeply appreciate as a novelist.)

Life is messy. I can understand why the ex-students are angry. The novelist may or may not be a jerk. However, I believe that an artist should be allowed to use just about everything at his or her fingertips in order to create art. The real issue for me is whether this novel, taken on its own merits, asks interesting questions and does so in a compelling way. The answer here is yes and yes. I highly recommend it without reservations.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 5 out of 5]

In existential philosophy, the words "You deserve nothing" are not reproachful. Rather, they define human responsibility and imperative, and the fundamental freedom to choose (versus the determinist ideology of fate). Essence comes after existence, not before. Human beings encounter themselves, surge up in this world, and have the burden of choice. We are not blobs of fate and destiny powered by an outside, ontological force. We are that force; there is no karmic essence--the world, as such, is a disinterested place, and we ascribe meaning to life and thrust ourselves into it. Existentialism 101.

At the International High School of France, in Paris, American teacher William Silver is the conferred noblesse oblige--a school celebrity, hero, icon. It is the eve of America's invasion of Iraq, a time of protest and passionate politics. He is the teacher (most) everyone adores, wants to be near, or wants to be. Self-contained, attractive, charismatic, eloquent, inflammatory--he's the thinking-person's pinup of appeal and intellect. Students here are privileged, wealthy, and well traveled. They worship him, one despises him with jealous contempt, and another, who isn't in any of his classes, adores him with limpid gazes and lust.

A crude, angry Dubliner, Colin, gradually finds his voice in Will's classroom, as do others who engage with new eyes with the world-at-large. Will teaches English Literature, particularly existential heavyweights, and invites an atmosphere of egalitarian challenge. Warning--a philosophy scholar may be peeved that whole passages are airlifted from Camus and Sartre. But Maksis does it with such élan that it is forgivable. It's an existential story within the context and milieu of existential academia.

This swift, compelling novel is told in alternating chapters by three characters. There's student Gilad, who despairs his life at home--a cycle of abuse his mother endures and refuses to relinquish. He seeks a father figure and a hero, and Will is the Silver lining on his cloudy days. Gilad and Will witness a transforming, violent moment at the commuter train station, while waiting for the train for school, which sanctifies Will's status in Gilad's eyes.

Marie is a French student at the ISF, but not in Will's class. She met him at a party the summer before senior year, and flirted heavily with him when they were drunk. Her derisive mother continually admonishes her, makes her feel diminished, and Marie is hungry for adult approval. Marie's best friend, Ariel, who she actually despises, is a superficial tart--beautiful but vapid, a control freak who wants everyone to notice her. Marie confides in Ariel, which is perplexing on a rational level, but understood within the angst of labile teen behavior.

Then there's Will, the locus of the story. Will struggles with being an example of what he teaches; he is standing on the precipice of his life as the cracks begin to appear. He faces moral junctures that could be ruinous, and his image is colliding with his actions.

The novel starts off whimsically witty, with a light touch--and initially threatens to be aimed at younger readers. The bedrock of the story is a boilerplate campus drama--a triangle, or several that overlap, and forbidden temptations. As the story progresses, the reader becomes cognizant of an informed story of provocative turmoil and a crisis of ethos. With an effortlessly lyrical cadence, quotable passages that melt in your mouth like warm custard, and human aches that lodge in your heart like stones, this luminous debut brims with pathos and spills with questions--how do we live, how do we choose, and what price freedom? Exhilarating and vibrant.

[Oriana · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was quite electrified by this book, both because of its own power and because it was the first book I read post-Goldfinch that didn't feel hollow and superficial and awful by comparison. This is a strong, passionate, tightly coiled book, fierce and cracking, with a slew of characters (mostly teenagers) who are just bristling with frustrated rage.

The plot is for sure in the vein of Dead Poets Society: Our hero is a dashing young(ish) teacher who is by god going to change his students' lives.

And much of it is a long actualized mediation on bravery and courage and cowardice and choice, on believing in what's right but still doing what's not so honorable, resorting to the thing that's easier and a bit more comfortable out of a sense of self-preservation.

Much of it. There's also the torrid-love-affair part, which I am not going to hide behind a spoiler tag because it's so much of the book and begins to be foreshadowed so early on. It kind of takes the Dead Poets Society thing to its logical conclusion: an inspiring young(ish) male teacher, revered and adored by every student who comes within his orbit, is inevitably going to get at least mooned at by some of his pupils. And probably more than that.

And this slides immediately into morally uncomfortable territory. I mean, is it ever okay to say that a 16-year-old girl is consenting to a sexual relationship with a 38-year-old man?

And more than that, what happens when this romantic trajectory is envisioned and written about by an older man? I think Maksik tried to be fair about it, by juxtaposing some of the same scenes from both parties' perspectives, especially in the anticipatory days leading up to the consummation of the affair. So we see the way the teacher sees the student (as a nymphette, a practiced siren) right next to the way she sees herself (as a terrified girl playing at seduction). Which does gives a bit of moral space.

And but yet it's still a man writing her, a middle-aged man penning the interior monologue of a young woman he (the author, the character, whatever) is trying to fuck—which is dicey, if not outright predatory. The part that made me really uncomfortable was that even when the girl is scared and nervous, her internal narrative keeps emphasizing how much she wants it, she wants it, she wants him so bad she's begging for it—which, I just don't know. It doesn't feel right at all, although of course I do remember being 16 and wanting something that badly, with every fucking fiber of my being.

I just happened never to have wanted a much older man—certainly not one who was compliant.

So I was already feeling, despite how intensely the book pulled me into its orbit and flung me along, a creeping sense of ickiness around the edges. And then, just after I finished the book and was collecting my thoughts, I got a note from my GR friend Elizabeth, telling me that there had been a big scandal surrounding this book, that a woman had come out post-publication to say that the student in question was based on her, that Maksik himself had been the teacher, that he put her real words into the mouth of the character but also twisted her motivations, the whole book was basically a re-violation at the hands / pen of the man who had taken great advantage of her as a teenager.

Which: good god.

Here's the article about that, on Jezebel.

Here's how Elizabeth handled it, in her own review, which is now on another site.

And me? I also find it a betrayal. It's one thing to think that a man wrote a slightly wish-fulfilling book where the prettiest girl in class seduces the dashing teacher who is clearly a stand-in for the author himself; it's obviously quite another to actually have that affair IRL and then write a book about it, thinly disguised as fiction.

I don't even know how to rate this book now, although I guess I'm going with three stars—as a book, it was electrifying and compelling, with just a patina of ick. But if in order to write an electrifying and compelling book, you have to live a morally reprehensible life, which you will then exploit? Good god, no.

[Michel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Remember the Million Little Pieces scandal, when Frey's "memoir" turned out to be fictitious? Well this is the same thing in reverse: a "novel" which turns out to be a memoir. The appalling story of a teacher committing custodial rape on a 17 year old student.
No apology, no atonement, au contraire, she seduced him, you see, she asked for it, she felt good about it, she still dreams of him, all the usual excuses! How did Sebold, his editor and a rape victim herself, let him get away with that shit?
Not a hint of remorse for failing to protect her from pregnancy and abortion. And then he reuses her all over again, betraying privileged information she confided during their scandalous 6-months "affair".
This being said, I read the book not knowing any of this, and I must confess I kind of liked it in the perverse way I enjoyed Lolita: it is well written (or well edited?), and atmospheric, and the characters feel real, and Marie's flesh is so beautifully celebrated that you forget she is a child, test-driving her sex-appeal in what should be a safe environment...
Maksik is no Nabokov, and Silver is no Humbert (who at least was fictitious), but it is a pretty good read (hence the 3 stars), until you find out that the only part of it imagined by the author is how "Marie" lived (lives) it.
A taste of ashes.

[Paltia · Rating 3 out of 5]

Once I started reading I continued on with few breaks. On one of those breaks I grabbed my old copy of The Stranger and with great amusement found lots of personal notes scribbled in the margins. Those notes, and I won't bore you with them here, as it would only reduce me to feeling like one of mr silver's students, told me a lot about where this book was headed. An interesting stroll, at a fast pace, to an inevitable tragic ending. Haven't we all walked headlong into unfixable mistakes?

[Trish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maksik’s debut novel is not a perfect thing, though he does a magnificent job catching the idiom and inflection of high school enrollees in the International School of France (ISF), an American school in a wealthy enclave of Paris. Three voices interweave: Marie, a student learning the power of her sexuality; Will, a thirty-three year-old teaching Sartre, Camus, Faulkner, and Shakespeare in a senior English seminar; Gilad, a student in Will’s class who, with Will, witnesses a man being pushed under a train at the subway.

The tentative and unclear thoughts of high school students is as frustrating to read as it was to experience: the cloudiness of motivations, of adult lives and decisions suddenly being thrust upon them, of the importance of their own place in a universe so small it includes only their friends and their parents. They tell us enough of what is going on in their heads that we believe there is little more there than what we are given.

It is the voice of teacher Will that makes us work: he gives us half-truths, possibilities for actions, and motivations that glance off the truth but that are not the truth. The death of his parents is one such possibility: both gone at once, suddenly. Will had left his wife then. But another reason for his actions might lie closer to watching a man randomly being thrown under a train in a Paris subway. He claims it has no effect upon him. It may be enough to make one think that one has little or no control nor impact on the direction of one’s life, so what does it matter? Will’s student, Gilad, makes the point that we should do just do the best we can and expect nothing in return. That is the human condition. We deserve nothing.

Perhaps this is why Will takes Marie, a student at his school, as his lover, even against his own better judgment. Marie is a typical teen, thinking that what she feels is the only way to look at an affair. If I say Marie seemed an unlikely choice, I reveal my own ignorance of sexual appeal. When Marie becomes pregnant, she is perhaps less thoughtful than she could have been about an abortion. Will allows Marie to make her own decisions, as he did when she called and came to his house the first time.

Will never explains himself. He is publicly revealed as a predator and is fired, but he leaves without apology nor explanation. We are to use his students’ comments regarding his classroom texts as guides to how he views his actions and inactions. Will did nothing when the man who spoke to him was murdered at the Metro. When confronted with a street demonstration, he “watches behind his sunglasses” but does not join. When violence breaks out, he speaks up but does nothing when he is spit upon for his intervention. He “has nothing else” in his arsenal. When his students challenge his willingness to act, he does not respond. He “pours the poison of his eloquence into their ears…” but cannot act himself. “Goodbye,” he thinks.

This is a man facing the existential crisis and losing himself. Even his girlfriend thinks him a ghost. He claims to be pleased that his students adore him but he is empty, numb, vacant. The teenaged journal entries are trying but they reflect a childish truth. The deadness of Will’s world is terrifying.

Maksik uses whatever material is to hand to demonstrate his novelistic skills. He has the goods. Now, this reader hopes he extends his reach beyond the issues facing a wealthy international school and brings his novelistic and philosophical skill to bear on the larger questions that face us in the world as it is. After all, “to be or not to be, that is the question.” Once that question has been answered, one is either engaged or dead.

Maksik’s second book, A Marker to Measure Drift, faces those larger questions. Bravo!

Two points I must comment upon: one good, one bad. Midway, Maksik gives us one of the hottest sex scenes I can recall. It should go down in the annals. In the final scene, however, is an embarrassingly empty gesture with a gold Cartier pen and a plastic ballpoint. I didn’t like that as well, but we can’t always have it all. Keep your ears cocked for news of this man. He’s not lightweight.
-------------
LATER I find myself mulling over the title again. Why did he say You deserve nothing instead of We or I deserve nothing? Could he be talking to his students, and in particular, one student?

[Tajma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Had I known just how good this novel would be, I would have saved it for a perfect winter day, with snow falling outside and the fireplace roaring.

[Sitaphul · Rating 1 out of 5]

Wow, wow, wow. I hated the teacher at the heart of this book, and it turns out the pathology of this man, Silver, may actually be the pathology of the author himself, judging by the extensive controversy around Maksik's past teaching history and dismissal, for having an affair with a student. (Others have posted the Jezebel article below.) But metacognitively, this book can serve as a study on the droll and maybe dangerous interpretations of existentialism by someone who clearly has some mental health issues related to the uses of sex and power. I mean, a 30-something male character getting solidly cast (or, is it the author recasting himself) as seduced by, and mostly passive to, a high school girl? Really? Really? C’mon. And the author then inhabiting the voice of the young woman? There are way too many ellipses, blank spaces, blind spots, one-dimensional characters, and Dead Poet's Society-esque dialogues - which all add up to make this book bland and highly disturbing, if that makes any sense.

[H · Rating 1 out of 5]

On the shelf, You Deserve Nothing looks like one of those god-awful misery memoirs (usually about rape or domestic violence) ubiquitous with WHSmith bestseller lists and Richard and Judy’s tv book club. Nevertheless, I’d read the angry reviews from Maksik’s ex-students with intrigue and was seduced by Alice Sebold’s stamp of approval (not to mention Waterstone’s comparison of Donna Tartt!).

The story alternates between three protagonists:
1) Will, the ‘inspirational’ English teacher. You remember? I had a few growing up. The problem with this one is that he’s so in love with the sound of his own voice (and himself), there is no charisma. Unfortunately, I spent the majority of the 'WILL' chapters skimming through his yawn inducing soliloquies which were about as deep as a Sparknotes entry.

2) Marie, an unhappy student on the brink of womanhood (blurgh), with your typical adolescent baggage: Daddy issues, a mean ex-boyfriend and best friend (Ariel), the teacher crush. If I didn’t read of Maksik’s dirty ‘secret’ I would’ve never thought he’d actually known a teenage girl. For this reason, I can understand why the real Marie feels so violated by what Maksik’s done: he reduces her down to a bad stereotype - her 'innocence', her seductive lips and full breasts. He patronises her existence but it doesn't stop him from shagging her.

3) Gilad, an expat brat from a wealthy family with secrets of his own (Daddy issues, again). He hangs on Will’s every word and is meant to be the sharpest pencil in the class, yet never really cottons on to the teacher-student affair. When he does, his reaction is a big, fat anti-climax. All in all, Gilad feels like a weak plot device, his character and turbulent home life doesn’t add to the story, it causes it to needlessly deviate.

I think you get the general gist...

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Where do I start with this magnificent debut book? That it was so mesmerizing that I read 200 pages at one clip, skipping dinner, not coming up for air? That it was so brilliantly done that even now, I am mulling over some key scenes? That it combines very real characters with themes such as existentialism and myth-making and how we learn and why we learn?

Let’s start at the beginning. Will Silver is a charismatic and damaged English teacher who teaches at the International School of Paris, where his teaching methods run to the unorthodox. At a graduation party, he hooks up with a buxom and troubled student, Marie de Clery, who seduces him and tells her best friend Ariel, who is used to being idolized and is envious and jealous. Another member of the class is Galad Fisher, who idolizes Mr. Silver, and who is feeling impotent in his own life against his bullying father.

In a simple prose style, reminiscent of Camus’s L’Etranger, the key characters – Will, Marie, and Gilad – recite the events that unfold during that significant time. The book is a bain for those of us who love literature; Will Silver urges his students to confront their existential freedom and choices based on the readings they do from Camus, Sartre, Faulkner, Shakespeare and others. Needless to say, moral choices aren’t always as neatly acted upon in real life and Silver sets himself up for a big fall in the eyes of his students.

The give-and-take in the classroom is so realistic that it had me on the edge of my seat with crisp dialogue, intellectual discussions, and real-world dilemmas. I have not yet read a book that explores the experience of reading so well. Alexander Maksik writes, “Every text is understood by each of us differently. Wee cannot separate our experience from the way we read. Our experience informs our reading in the same way that it informs our lives, what we see on the street, how we interact with people and so on...” In other words, there is no single truth.

You Deserve Nothing is unafraid of tackling some of the most important questions in life: does God even exist? Without God, how do we own our choices and find meaning in our lives? Can we ever go back to safer times and what happens when we can’t connect? (As Will’s colleague says, “Cowards spend their lives alone. Either with people who can’t hurt them or with no one at all.”) What if everything we have isn’t enough?

A tribute to the most dynamic teachers, a tale about the bridge between desire and action, a cautionary reminder of what happens when idealism fails, this is a stunning book. It will haunt your days.

[Kelly (Maybedog)]

For those out there who have condemned me for posting a review that wasn't about a book, this is about the book which may be based on a true story that victimized a child. If so, I do not wish to give this author money any more than I wanted to give OJ Simpson money for his book.

Since I am now in the limelight I feel compelled to mention that I always research the allegations of an author behaving badly before condemning them to my never read shelf. This was no exception.

Maksik has been accused of using his own crimes against a student as an inspiration for this story. The source is a lone article that does not provide any references or source material:

http://jezebel.com/5863188/how-a-teac...

The only other pieces I found referred back to the Jezebel article with the exception of this one which claims to be written by one of the other students in the class. Her story differs slightly which makes the whole thing a little more credible as a copycat would just parrot back what she read:

http://readingallthetime.wordpress.co...

I also found two comments on another article allegedly written by two more people in his class at The American School in Paris:

http://alwayscoffee.wordpress.com/201...

Although referencing the Jezebel article, this reporter questions the accusation because he talked to Maksik before knowing about the allegations. He says, "The author is allegedly using his own crimes as a teacher against students as inspiration for this story.":

http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/arch...

I wonder if something really did happen and it's his way of working through the guilt. Or it's someone who doesn't understand the book like many people don't understand Lolita, and set out to vilify the man. Or it's what it appears to be on the surface: a man who did something abhored by society who is trying to justify his actions by showing that morality is not a constant and that what might be wrong sometimes is not always wrong at other times.

So I do not know if any of this is true. If anyone has any more information either way, I would love to hear it. I do not wish to destroy a man on the basis of one article nor do I want to support a man I believe to have inappropriate boundaries with youth.

Until then it's on my not-interested shelf, not my never read shelf which is the dark dungeon of my library.

[Casey · Rating 1 out of 5]

Alexander Maksik was my high school English teacher at the American School of Paris and I know the real person this book calls “Marie.” These are verifiable facts.

When I originally wrote a review after this book’s release in 2011, I stated that the contents were non-fiction and reported that the Author was detailing his own acts of abuse of a former student. Good Reads removed my review for “unsubstantiated libel.” Since then, Jezebel has reported the truth and other reviews reference it freely, so I’m assuming that’s accepted fact, now.

The bottom line is this: Alexander Maksik abused his position of authority as an educator, took advantage of and irrevocably harmed one of his young female student, and then got a glowing review in the New York Times when he wrote about his real-life actions as fiction. This book is a self-serving justification of his actions, in which he speaks for his own real-life victim, thereby further silencing her. “You Deserve Nothing” is a classic example of abuser justification and victim-blaming.

[Shannon · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I can give my usual summary of this novel. I tried, and it just sounds so trite and dull. (In fact, this review was really hard to write, I've been trying for over a week and it's a mess, I apologise.) I will offer what I can and go from there, for context if nothing else. This is basically the story of a teacher and a student who have an affair - if we were to break the book down to its base plot - but I didn't know anything else, going on, and I'm not always sure I should give more to others than I started with, but, if I don't, I won't be able to talk about it. So here's some more detail:

Will Silver left America - and his wife - for France after the tragic deaths of his parents; he's been teaching English at the International School of France in Paris for the last three years. His seminar class for older students (sorry, I find the whole "freshman" "senior" etc. thing really confusing so I'm not sure what grade it is exactly) is a small group, apparently not the standard classroom set-up for American schools (the school should probably be called "American School in Paris", as one of the characters considers it [quick note: I found out after writing this that that is exactly the name of the real school where Maksik taught! I'm good, aren't I? Or not...), where they discuss philosophy and the meaning of life, religion and choice through Sartre, Camus and other French-speaking and American writers.

Popular with his students, Will comes across, at the beginning, as a bit creepy, a bit too close and friendly. I'm unsure why we're given this impression to start with, though how much of it is my pre-conceived ideas about this teacher who will have an affair with a student, is hard to separate. And then there was my other knowledge, that Maksik himself was a teacher at a school just like this (and the gossip that he had an affair with a student and this story is based on that - but I don't want to get off track), which made me feel like Mr Silver is Maksik, and Mr Silver is, at first, just a bit too Wonderful, y'know? At the beginning of the novel, for example, he's greeted by his students for the last class of the year like this:

"So, listen Mr. S. I'm going to miss you this summer and I want you to know that I really loved your class and that I think you're a great teacher." She blushes. "So, thank you for everything. You kind of changed my life this year."
"Thank you, Julia. I've loved having you as a student."
She looks at the floor.
Steven Connor struts into the classroom, short and bluff and pushing his chest out.
"Mr S!" He [sic] says, extending his hand, a little businessman. "How you doing, Mr. S. You now I'm going to miss this class, dude. Why don't you teach juniors? You suck. What the hell am I going to do next year?" [p.9]

(Okay, quick disclaimer here: I am a teacher, an English teacher, though I'm not currently teaching. Just had to put that in as it did affect my reading, too.)

Throughout the novel, Mr Silver is the object of girls' crushes and boys' hero-worshipping. Now, perhaps it was coy, blushing Julia, or perhaps it was oozing smarmy Steven, or one of the several other students who come and say much the same thing to "Mr S", but I found this all rather cloying and wishful thinking. Because so many teachers, if not all, on some level want to be that teacher who changes the lives of their students. Granted, Will is conscious of this:

All that attention, it's hard to resist. And if you're honest you acknowledge that before you ever became a teacher you imagined your students' reverence, your ability to seduce, the stories you'd tell, the wisdom you'd impart. You know that teaching is the combination of theater and love, ego and belief. You know that the subject you teach isn't as important as how you use it. [p.76]

Combine that with the pre-knowledge that he's going to have a sexual relationship with a student, and I didn't get the best introduction to Will. My perception of him did actually improve as the novel went on, strangely enough, probably because of his classes and the conversations they have and that he sticks up for the students' right to be challenged at school. Which, considering what he's up to outside the school, presents something of a Humbert Humbert character, where you like someone even when you're disgusted, angry etc. over their actions (and what their actions mean about them as a person). It's confronting and challenging, which I like, though You Deserve Nothing lacks the oomph and power of Lolita.

Moving on from that verbose introduction to Will, we also have two students narrating: Gilad Fisher and Marie de Cléry. The novel is structured into chapters told from the three different perspectives, from when they were older. Will's chapters have a more natural prose while Gilad and Marie narrate as if they're telling a story for a documentary. It's a bit weird. I also found the tense use strange and muddled. It flits between present and past tense seemingly randomly, and I found it very distracting. For example, Will's first chapter - and this is all in the characters' pasts, just to reiterate - begins on the last day of the school year, the previous school year, before he has an affair, and it is told in present tense. Then somewhere, around page 75, he starts to reminisce and tells the rest of his side of the story in past tense, often with that same reflective, "are the cameras rolling?" tone. I'm not a big fan of this experimental use of tenses; it too often just seems amateurish and wanky, or at the very least clumsy.

Gilad and Marie. Gilad, one of Mr Silver's students, was my favourite character, and I felt I could really relate to him (as an aside, for the first few chapters I thought, or assumed, he was a girl! I had to completely change the way I read him when I at last encountered a pronoun). Marie - I'm not sure that we're meant to like her at all, she's too realistic in many ways and alienating and off-putting in others. Or put it this way, like her plastic friend Ariel, anyone who doesn't get Mr Silver's English class isn't someone I'd get along with in real life. Because I did love his classes, which are included in the narrative because of the questions they raise about life, love and religion, which are in their way, themes of the book; and because of the dynamics between the students, and the students and their teacher, Will. You can learn a lot about existentialism, for example, but more to the point, the conversations and topics begin to reflect Will's state of mind as he becomes, dare I say it, a bit unhinged. Gilad notices it too - Mr Silver is his hero - but he is the last kid in school to learn about what's going on between Will and Marie.

Where Maksik wrote well was the shifting narrative voices of his three main characters - I can't really call them protagonists, perhaps because of that real life, documentary feel to the story (there are lots of good reviews, like this one on Shelf Love, that discuss the morals and ethics of using a possibly true story for fiction and, thus, profit, but I'd prefer to stick to discussing the book on its own where possible). You will get the same scene repeated but from a different character's perspective, so you get a different view of what happened. This is particularly true of Marie, who comes across as a slutty sixteen year old in Will's chapters, an experienced slutty sixteen year old who seduces him. In Marie's chapters, we get to meet a shy, insecure, self-conscious girl whose mother is constantly disappointed with her appearance, who has no real friends, and whose previous experience is one boy, Collin, who physically forced her to give him a blowjob on a bus. At some point, we learn that she is vulnerable and lacking a strong, loving, nurturing adult in her life, and yearns for a caring, tender boyfriend. Will, as an experienced adult, has that tenderness as well as the skill. You can't really blame her, not considering the stupid things we do as kids, and her maturity over the course of the novel is subtle but true. She grows up, and learns to stand on her own feet, more so than before anyway. Gilad, too, grows stronger because of Will's indirect and direct influence, and stands up to his wife-beating father.

On the other hand, Will, who took advantage of a young girl's lust and insecurities, is somewhat reduced by the end of the story. The events change him too, but there's no deep, moral, introspective navel-gazing going on here - and for that I thank Maksik, I can't stand that kind of self-indulgent writing or character. And there are a lot of them around. Instead, we're left with a kind of limbo, left with Will's abrupt departure and absence and like Marie and Gilad, have to go on with our lives as independent adults. It's a coming-of-age story for Gilad and Marie, but what is it exactly for Will? Did he return to the States and possibly his wife, to face what he'd been running from? Or did he hide away in Paris a bit longer, or somewhere else, in denial of what he'd done? It's a more effective story for leaving us lots to ponder.

The long and the short of it is, I'm conflicted. There was much to love here, and in writing this slip-shod review, the love has come out. But while I started off feeling decidedly "meh" about it, and came to like it more and more as the story progressed, I was still left feeling strangely disappointed at the end. Not with the ending per se, but with the book as a whole. If anything, it says "good first novel, his second will probably be stronger." Maybe it was the setting, which was too often skimmed over, or crowded with Americans and other foreigners. Maybe it was the structure and the pretentious use of two tenses that didn't work for me. Maybe it's that I kept waiting, waiting, for something to happen, something to lift it up and into the realm of real excellence. And maybe it was that it was too realistic, and to grossly paraphrase Northrop Frye, we find realism in fiction to be unrealistic. Or alienating. Or uncomfortable. Or dull.

Which brings us full circle back to the issue of this book as fact disguised as fiction, and what that means, to us the readers, to the story, to the ethics of publishing it even. Personally, at this point, I'm not too bothered, but it does make you read the book with a different degree of alertness, and a different reaction to scenes and characters. It definitely colours the way you read.

The rambling nature of this review just shows you how unsure I am about this book. There's a lot more going on than I've discussed, and yet I've put the emphasis on Will's sexual relationship with Marie - while I was reading this, I kept having the feeling like that relationship wasn't the point of the novel, was a red herring even, but now I think I'm just reading too much into it. It is at times too obvious a book, and at others quite nicely subtle. The obvious overshadowed the subtle, for me, and lowered my appreciation of what is otherwise a good, solid debut.

[Miriam · Rating 2 out of 5]

The characters seem almost cliched - the intellectual and loved teacher, the enlightened and different boy, the giddy infatuated girl - but I was relieved that the plot was more interesting. The main three characters each narrate portions of the book. The story revolves around the teacher, a character whom everyone else loves and admires but is somewhat of a mystery. Yet while the reader is granted insight into his mind through his own narration of the events, he doesn't reveal anything about himself. He seems like a robot, drifting through life without any opinions or feelings. The two other narrators are emotional enough to make up for him, but he falls flat. It seems like the author couldn't decide between leaving him an enigma or divulging his thoughts, so he left it somewhere in the middle. This makes him difficult to relate to. We see him go through substantial events, yet he seems so detached from everything. I guess that is part of the personality of his character, but to be able to read his thoughts, the reader should be granted a more in-depth read of him as a person. The method of narration is such that the reader often sees the same event through two different perspectives, which is interesting in theory but quite tedious to read. The ending leaves much to be desired. For a book that focuses so much on emotions and thoughts, the conclusion is so short that it allows for little reaction from any character.

[Marilyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I saw this reviewed by my daughter and decided to read it. I was totally engrossed for half the novel until I switched from thinking about it as literature to thinking about it as an educator. At first I was mesmerized by the main character Silver, a teacher of high school students who challenges his Seniors in an English seminar to read critically and think for themselves. The Paris setting lends itself well to the intellectual fabric of the book. On one level, I found it a fascinating read about a charismatic teacher and his cadre of devoted students.

Unfortunately, Silver has arrived in Paris after losing his parents and leaving his wife. He is both vulnerable and needy. In many ways, he is dead emotionally. The only thing he has that feeds him is his teaching. That is a complex and dangerous teacher. Too often teachers need students more than students need them. The damage left in his wake is more than his affair with a student which is just one manifestation of his inability to live within the boundaries of his profession. This is evident as well in the classroom where he pushes his students at times beyond their cognitive ability perhaps asking the existential questions he, himself, is trying to answer.

These are wealthy, worldly students who are still in their teens and the main characters from dysfunctional families. They worship him and are, finally, let down by him. A bit different lesson than we wish them to have. Silver has a fellow English teacher at the school who is probably in love with him. She has students who adore her also. She is the real hero of the book because she is there to pick up the pieces.

As you can see, I wandered from the book critic to the frustrated educator. It was a very compelling read. And, if I separate the author from the deed, I can look forward with fascination to his next novel.

[B the BookAddict · Rating 2 out of 5]

Sometimes, I can be out of step with what the reading public likes and dislikes. This is one of those times. The Daily Mail says this is hugely satisfying and thought-provoking: Annie Sebold says it is one of the most engaged reads I've in years. It has a 3.59 rating on Goodreads. I didn't feel these any of these things about this novel. Set in the International School of Paris, it is a story about a subject we are becoming well aware of these days: a teacher, Will, having sex with a student, Marie. But in this case, it is hard to feel pity for the student. Marie is 16 and she is the one who initiates the affair. It's a shame because Will is a gifted teacher; he has that knack of connecting with his students. I'm still not sure of the significance of the third character, Gilad. The separate chapters are written from each character's point of views. Marie's chapters are written as if from a diary so there is very little punctuation excepting full stops and I found this off-putting.

There is nothing outstanding about the writing and the story ends with the inevitable conclusion. Maksik has had a lot of good press about this book including one which states the book may be Maksik's own personal experience. But it is not titillating to be read for that reason either. And for me, this is barely an average read. 2.5★

[Julie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This had a feeling of honesty about it and it wasn't until after I'd read it that I learnt this is part autobiographical. How true this is I don't know. Apart from the fact that the subject matter was controversial, which may be a trigger warning for many, I couldn't really engage with this at all.

[Louisa Cowell · Rating 2 out of 5]

When I first read 'You Deserve Nothing' I didn't know it was semi-autobiographical, and it left me somewhat puzzled. It depicts an affair between an underage girl and her teacher, and portrays the relationship uncritically as good and formative for her. This surprised me - we've collectively come far enough to recognise that unequal power dynamics in relationships can cause unfairnesses and abuse that neither partner would be willing to own up to. Apart from anything else, the questions about power seem like the most interesting reason to write about a relationship like this.

When I realised that the novel is based on Maksik's experience of sleeping with his own underage student (yes, really), it all made more sense. This book reads, above all else, like an excuse. Should Maksik's self-insert character have acted differently? Perhaps, but the girl was grateful. His horrified colleagues didn't understand the nature of their affair; he gave her confidence by making her feel wanted. He didn't hurt her, he helped her.

To be honest, I feel a bit gross about having read this, and I wish I'd known in advance what it was going to be so I could have avoided it. Maksik was the person in power when he had his affair, and now he's the person in power who gets to explain it to the world (incidentally probably also compounding the harm he inevitably did do to his real-life student by commandeering her perspective). In another novel about a grown man sleeping with a child, Nabokov's 'Lolita', Humbert spends most of the novel justifying his actions to the reader. However, there are moments when the veil slips and the reader sees what Humbert understands, although he doesn't want to admit it to himself: that he is exploiting Dolores, and harming her deeply. There are no comparable moments of self-awareness in 'You Deserve Nothing', no passages where Maksik allows himself to imagine that a thirty-plus year old man, in having a sexual affair with a child, might hurt her. It is breathtakingly arrogant of Maksik to think this part of his life is a cause for public philosophical musing rather than shame. It's also pretty hilarious that his self-insert character is irresistibly charismatic, adored by all of his students and lusted after by many. I'd be interested to see him through their eyes, and the eyes of his colleagues. I have a feeling the view might be considerably different.

I've given this book two stars to recognise that it is both well-written and gripping. However, it left a very bad taste in my mouth. I do think that in a world where lots of great books are written but can't all be published, this wasn't the one to prioritise. Men who hurt little girls for their own gratification have always had a voice. There's no reason to hand them a megaphone, however nice their prose is.

[Featherbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

You Deserve Nothing is set in a private international high school in Paris (the setting being yet another character in the story), with compelling first-person narrations by two students and their revered English teacher who challenges them to think about their reading in moral and philosophical terms. They try to translate his intellectual messages to their lives and suffer the universal response of teenagers to the disappointments of adulthood as their beloved teacher seems to throw away his livelihood and career in careless, unwary behavior. I read it with total absorption. The following passage about teachers stuck with me:

"The ones who stay are so often some of the most depressing people you've ever met in your life. It has nothing to do with their age. They've stayed because of their dispositions--bitter, bored, lacking in ambition, lonely, and mildly insane....This is what it takes to teach for half a life-time. The ones who care, who love the subjects, who love their students, who love, above all, teaching--they rarely hang around."

Maksik is a gifted writer and I look forward to more of his work.

[Aelel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really liked this book. While it was a fast read that wasn't particularly complicated, it reintroduced several ideas about life and our choices that we often tend to ignore or forget. It's not even that I had a strong connection any of the characters, but I found I could understand their sense of confusion and what led them to their choices. I read this book in one sitting, and walked away from it feeling like I had something to think about, rather than a lot of the mindless books I've been reading lately.

I've seen that this is most likely based off of true events in the author's life, and that some people feel that invalidates the book. It creates a controversy over the author's insensitivity towards those involved, since he did not seek permission first. If we had to dismiss every author who did morally questionable things or who were complete jerks, there would be very little left on the shelf.

If anything, I think the author's background adds another layer of discussion about the choices we make and the inherent weaknesses in all of us. So rather condemn the author and burn the book, examine the book, examine the author, examine the two together and use it as a way to understand humanity, good or bad or somewhere in the nebulous middle.

[Vivian · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had heard that the author might have used real events from his own life in this novel, so approached it with caution. Not to worry: Will (main character and should-know-better male half of a teacher/student relationship) doesn't come off smelling like a rose. Although it is a bit suspicious how much Marie is the sexual aggressor, and how Will (the author?) just seems to fall into becoming her lover because he doesn't care enough about life to "just say no" to her advances. Will is worshipped like a classical hero, and like those heros, has his fatal flaw and tumbles down...

The story is well-written, and you feel for all the characters, but Will is left as a bit of a blank slate. I enjoyed the depictions of Paris life as an expat (have lived similar things), and the observations of another character who has moved so often he doesn't understand the idea of having a "home" (also understand that very well: having moved more times than I can count since my wedding, I'm sure my kids would feel the same way). My feelings are mixed, since the idea that the events are based on reality sticks in my throat, but the story is a good read.

[Heather · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is a really difficult book for me to review. Had I read it in a vacuum, I would have given it four stars. Of course, I didn't read it in a vacuum. I can't get the Jezebel article out of my head, and for that reason, I have to give this book one star.

[Shirley · Rating 2 out of 5]

This promised much at the start but turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. I didn't much like the main character and the story just wasn't what I'd thought it would be...Gave it 3 stars but should have been 2 really...

[Ashleigh Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book rocked my world. As a former international school student and current teacher, it sucked me in for those two reasons. The incredible writing and insight on the inherently complicated and messiness of life are what kept me there. I can't stop thinking about it.

[Bill Silva · Rating 2 out of 5]

Reading just a few of the Goodreads reviews will clue you in as to the controversy surrounding this book and its author, and I have some definite thoughts about the whole sordid story…but just as a piece of writing, the novel isn’t very good (and, like its protagonist, it’s as pretentious as all get-out). The storyline is hackneyed, the narrative structure is clumsy, the dialogue is wooden (don’t get me started on the main character’s pompous monologues), and the characters are totally predictable (when they’re not unbelievable). I’m all for moral ambiguity and uncertainty and authorial ambivalence in dealing with complicated issues…but the novel has some gaping holes in this regard, and I was left with an extremely bad taste in my mouth. Despite the author’s absolutely transparent ambition, this isn’t The Stranger, and he’s no Camus.

[Margaret · Rating 4 out of 5]

The power of this amazing book lies in its honesty. The author talks of an incredibly emotive subject and gives the point of view from various characters. Concensus is that the book is autobiographical, but rather than launch into feminist outrage, I say with more conviction than ever that the author is to be commended.

Readers who are interested in international schools and settings, philosophy and ethics - read it!

[Sarah Ali · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Paris of You Deserve Nothing is a city of homeless men in metro tunnels and couples amorously doing the dishes, four hands in the soapy water, of chic Isabel Marant knits and fuckUsa T-shirts. From one point of view the myths are intact; from another everything is unravelling. A heroic teacher can become a coward and a shy schoolgirl a seductress – just as in 2003, the year of the invasion of Iraq, Chirac could look like the man who stood up to Bush and Blair or a cheese-eating surrender monkey. Or both.

[Evan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I received my advance copy of Alexander Maksik's debut novel from a publisher rep (I'm a bookseller). The rep briefly explained that the teacher (more or less the protagonist) is similar to Robin Williams' character from the film "Dead Poets Society", and that he starts an inappropriate relationship with a student, and that it gets interesting from there. Though this review refers to a pre-publication galley, I sincerely hope they publish the novel as is. It is enthralling (even if you find your inner monologue taken over by The Police's "Don't Stand So Close To Me" as I did while reading).

I'm not going to re-hash the plot, because that's pretty much it (above). What's so engaging about this book is that the characters are all totally convincing, from Gilad, a stoic loner with domestic demons, to Marie (the femme fatale) to Will (the teacher), to Ariel, the Mean Girls antagonist. Maksik manages to get inside the head of a group of intelligent and damaged teenagers (but aren't they all?) just as well as he sketches faculty politics and the inner life of a man whose personal emptiness keeps him perpetually unhappy, and vulnerable to the events that transpire.

The prose style reflects assiduous polish and prep and careful intent, in debt to Maksik's Iowa Writers' Workshop pedigree. The images of Paris this novel serves up are delicious and wholly appropriate. The novel evokes Hemingway's A Moveable Feast in the description of the city, carefully updated to include the simmering racial tension of Sarkosy's France and the West at war with radical Islam.

That, the undertone of radicalism, is probably the best place to access the grease that philosophically moves You Deserve Nothing. Heavily informed by Albert Camus, a dash of Thoreau, a liberal drought of Shakespeare, and a dram of Faulkner, Will's students learn that to choose or not to choose each has the same gravitas. The eventual decisions the characters make are thus informed. The teenagers realize that from their awakening to the complex world of decision-making and personal moral fortitude, they are henceforth forced into adulthood, choosing or not choosing, compelled to Be (in the sense of Hamlet). While the sexual action of the story between Will and Marie occupies a large part of the text [EDITORIAL ASIDE: and their first scene is amazingly, startlingly, incredibly well-played and erotic], the thing that makes the novel breathe is that the characters feel as unpredictable as you might expect a batch of teens freshly exposed to existentialism.

The novel will force you to think about yourself as a human. You choose or choose not to decide, as the Rush song goes, and still have made a choice. The title is apt: you deserve nothing, because you make the reality by your every breath in reaction to it.

Choose to read this novel.