I was pleasantly surprised by the beginning of this young adult novel. Myers returns back to New York City in the novel, and focuses on Spoon, a young man who has found a way out of the hood. He is accepted into The Academy, a school where he is able to live and study. He comes home for Christmas break and sees his neighborhood for what it is for the first time. He sees the hopelessness, the drug abuse, the alcoholism, and the general despair. Even his own girlfriend has become addicted to heroin. But he can't abandon her for the white girl at his school. Because Gabi needs him. Her mother is dying and she must care for her blind grandfather and siblings. And Spoon is going back to school. He must. It's the only way he can get out.

I did think the book was a little preachy in spots, but this topic has to be. Do I think my students will love the book? Not really. ( )

Myers returns once again to his beloved Harlem, a place he no longer lives. Spoon sees the hurt of Harlem, the drugs, the poverty, the gangs. He longs for the education that will set him free. For Spoon, this freedom comes in the form of a Connecticut prep school, in a much wealthier white neighborhood. But Spoon also sees the dreams and the love and the humanity of Harlem. This is the place of his friends, his family, and, most importantly, Gabi, his poet, the love of his live. When Spoon leaves for Connecticut, his relationship with Harlem and with Gabi can no longer be the same. Both are torn. In a few short months, Gabi begins to experiment with Heroin, the Beast. Leaving Gabi for his new life, for the education he has always dreamed of, is the easiest choice. It may also be Spoon’s best choice. In this struggle between community and loyalty and self-respect, Myers asks us to consider whether this novel has more than one beast to fight.

This is a beautiful, understated little volume about a high school senior's first return to Harlem after a term at a New England prep school. Spoon returns to find himself looking at Harlem through an outsider's eyes. He can't slip back into the rhythm of his old friendships -- he asks the wrong observations, and no longer knows the things that everyone knows. But bewilderingly worse is what has been happening to his old classmates. One has been busted for dealing. Another is pregnant. Spoon's best friend has dropped out of school. And Spoon's girlfriend, an aspiring poet who had stopped returning Spoon's letters, is using.

Myers' titular beast is the Minotaur, a monster that consumes sacrificial youths. Harlem's streets are its Labyrinth. There is no Theseus; only this year's sacrifices, Spoon and Gabi among them.

Spoon spends his winter break shuttling between Harlem and the Upper East Side, trying to feel his way through choices he doesn't understand. How do you help a girlfriend whose life is coming apart? How do you do it without throwing your life after hers? Or should you throw your life after hers? Is that what love is?

Did I say that it is a beautiful book? The story is told quietly and deftly, liberally invoking imagery from Greek fable, Cuban poets, and Goya's paintings. And yet for all that elegant quietness, some of the turning points still made me gasp. I shall definitely be reading more of Myers' fiction. ( )

Gillian Engberg (Booklist, Oct. 1, 2003 (Vol. 100, No. 3))
High-school senior Spoon hopes to marry his girlfriend, Gabi, an aspiring poet with "a smile that pleases the angels," and he hates to leave her for a year to attend a Connecticut prep school. During the fall, Gabi's letters become infrequent, and when Spoon returns home for the holidays, he's heartbroken to discover that she has begun to use "the beast": drugs. In his latest novel, Myers tells a powerful story of first love and the profound ways that drugs touch everyone: "If Gabi could lose her way, so could I." Spoon narrates in a voice that's artistic and colloquial, his thoughts tumbling out as poetry, and readers may miss the precise sense of some passages. But Myers captures the disorientation of living between worlds, where home is "the same, but not the same," and Spoon's sharp observations about race and love will resonate deeply with teens, as will his ambivalence about the future: "I don't know. I'm not even sure what there is to know." Category: Books for Older Readers--Fiction. 2003, Scholastic, $16.95. Gr. 9-12.

Spoon returns to his old neighborhood after a semester at prep school, and finds that people he knows have changed. Worst of all, his girlfriend is doing drugs. He grapples with what it means for her to lose hope and how to help her.

Poetic and evocative, I found the writing style compelling. The story is and voices are realistic, and the feeling of “otherness” palpable – what does it mean to be a black boy who went to a white school coming back to hard Harlem? YA problem novel at its best. ( )