Project X

In the wilderness of junior high, Edwin Hanratty is at the bottom of the food chain. His teachers find him a nuisance. His fellow students consider him prey. And although his parents are not oblivious to his troubles, they can't quite bring themselves to fathom the ruthless forces that demoralize him daily.

Sharing in these schoolyard indignities is his only friend, Flake. Branded together as misfits, their fury simmers quietly in the hallways, classrooms, and at home, until an unthinkable idea offers them a spectacular and terrifying release.

From Jim Shepard, one of the most enduring and influential novelists writing today, comes an unflinching look into the heart and soul of adolescence. Tender and horrifying, prescient and moving, Project X will not easily be forgotten.

“Project X is a vivid, unforgettable, and heartrending book that left me sort of in love with poor Edwin, wishing I could turn back time, drop into the book, and given the poor kid the attention he deserves.  Jim Shepard is a fantastic writer — compassionate, funny, and fearless — and he has written a frightening reflection on our times that does what great writing always does: inspires us to look more closely at life, and be more caring.”  —George Saunders  

“Project X takes us into the ghastly condition of the toxic teenage android, by which I mean its dialogue is ear-perfect and funny as can be.  It’s also a very frightening and suspenseful and serious novel.  Moreover, Shepard has a deep, intelligent sympathy for his characters, all of whom are realized and affecting.  This is a fine and moving novel.”   — Robert Stone 

“Jim Shepard’s eighth graders, so brilliantly rendered, elicit the same helpless pity and recognition as Denis Johnson’s most memorable characters.  This is a dazzling, impossibly wrenching novel.”  —Andrea Barrett 

“The recent school shootings that have lodged in the American consciousness as a recurring dark nightmare inspire a powerful fictional counterpart in Shepard’s vivid, frightening sixth novel.  The narrator is fourteen year-old Edwin Hanratty, an underachieving eighth-grader whose studied disrespect for all things adult and eloquent foul mouth instantly remind us of Salinger’s Holden Caulfield… Shepard’s grasp of the roiling, unstable psychology of adolescence couldn’t be sharper, and he leads us skillfully through his protagonist's embattled days… fleshed out with deft foreshadowings and mordantly amusing vignettes… The climax is a swift, stunning chaos of uncoordinated actions and responses… A story ‘ripped from the headlines’ and transformed into a bitter, gemlike work of art.”   — Kirkus (starred review) 

“Shepard is masterly at setting up our heartbreak and is at his most brilliant in capturing the demented essence of junior high.”  — The New York Times Book Review 

“Shepard obviously has a lock on the new American paranoia, and his voice should be essential reading… Here is the effect of his books: a reader finishes them buzzing with awe, with respect, and yet, with a great deal of worry.”   — Chicago Tribune 

“Jim Shepard brings to his depiction of these lost boys a striking insight and even humor.  They’re so real, they nearly jump off the page into the nearest schoolyard, which makes it all the more chilling.”   — The Boston Globe 

“Hanratty’s turmoil proves to be an intense experience in anxiety recall: your most frustrating teen memories will find unholy corroboration.  Which makes Shepard’s intimacy with the bleeding psyche of misfitting adolescence all the more discomfiting — we’re so close, we feel the heft of the Kalashnikov.”  — The Village Voice 

“Of all Shepard’s work, perhaps none blends fact and fiction more controversially than Project X… He willfully defies the boundaries by which so much of our culture is defined… Shepard, then, is a writer who, along with a small group of contemporaries, is reconfiguring how fiction works.”  — Los Angeles Times 

“If Jim Shepard’s fiction carried a sign, it might say DANGER; EXPLOSIVES.  As this riveting novel progresses, we find ourselves praying for Hanratty’s salvation — and our own.”  — O, The Oprah Magazine 

“Project X truly ups the ante in dark realism and depth.”   — New York Magazine 

“A feat of stunning imagination… Project X leaves you with questions that you’ll ask yourself every time you see one of those kids who seem slightly out of place in school, at the mall, at church — or in your child’s bedroom.”   — The Kansas City Star 

“Shepard puts us into the shoes of two boys with murder on their minds but not in their hearts.  His compassion for them rings out like a shout — the kind no one hears until it’s too late.”   — Salon 

“Shepard’s ear for the speech of today’s youth is remarkable.  He has fashioned a kind of staccato poetry out of an often inchoate, vocabulary-poor manner of conveying, or avoiding communication… The first person, present tense voice varies from deadpan humor to deadpan melancholy.  Either way, his narration is unfailingly intense and captivating.”   — Newsday 

“After all the hand-wringing and glib explanations for school shootings, Project X offers as clear a view into the minds of the kids who actually succumb to a deadly impulse.”   — The Columbus Dispatch