Street Pharm

I finished this book last week, and I thought it would be interesting to review it. It's a book that some of my students are reading for literature circles, and I think that it's a pretty good book. I should say, though, that some of the material in the book is pretty grown-up, and this book probably deserves at least a PG-13 rating, if not an R rating. There are no explicit sex scenes, and not a lot of violence. But there are some suggestive details, and some drug use.

The book is about a Brooklyn drug dealer. He lives with his mother, who works nights, and whose husband is in prison for drug dealing. The main character, Ty Johnson, is 17 years old (and turns 18 before the end of the book), and has inherited his father's drug dealing business. He works with his father's ex-partner, Sonny. Of course, Ty is the brains behind the operation, and Sonny is merely a loyal partner who helps give Ty some legitimacy. The basics of the plot are simple: Ty gets thrown out of his high school and is sent to a strict alternative high school. He isn't able to sneak around at this new school like he could at the old, and he finds a brainy young woman that he eventually falls in love with. While this is happening, a new drug dealer moves into his territory from Miami and tries to force him out.

Ty visits his father in prison every few weeks, and his father is a cold, dedicated businessman who tells his son to use a hired killer to get rid of Darkman, the new dealer who wants to push Ty out of business. Ty doesn't want to go that far.

The conflict comes from the tension between his desire to be a wholesome, normal boyfriend for the young woman that he has recently fallen in love with, and from his dedication to his father's business and the competition that tries to kill him.

Eventually, Ty makes the predictable decision. I enjoyed the beginning of the book because Ty seemed to be pleasantly naughty, and his cynical views on business and society were both interesting and powerful. But I didn't quite believe the ending. I'm not sure that the ending captured the complexity of the situation - it's not easy to dump one career and choose something more honest but far less lucrative and powerful. It's even more difficult to stay that way.

I think this book - Street Pharm by Alison van Diepen - is worth reading because of its mostly believable depiction of the life of a drug dealer. But it doesn't do justice to the complicated network of factors that create drug dealers, or create crowds of people who admire drug dealers. That would have made it more than a good book - that woudl have made it a great book.