Palo Alto

Set in a northern California university town, Palo Alto traces the lives of an extended group of teenagers as they experiment with vices of all kinds, struggle with their families and one another, and succumb to self-destructive, often heartless nihilism. James Franco presents his characters in all their raw humanity, while at the same time providing insight into the teenage mind.

In the classic American tradition of story-cycles such as Sherwood Anderson’s Winesburg, Ohio , James Franco draws a stark, vivid, disturbing but, above all, compassionate portrait of lives on the rough fringes of youth.

‘Franco’s talent is unmistakable, his ambition profound. He has taken the twin subjects of suburban Palo Alto and American adolescence and made them as scary and true as they must be. This is a book to be inhaled more than once, with delight and admiration, with unease and pure enjoyment. As a writer, he’s here to stay.’ Gary Shteyngart, author of Absurdistan