Young 4 Ever

An accomplished cyber sportsman sets on a mission to spend a few days in a small provincial town. He posts an advert in local newspaper looking for a girlfriend to help him spend a thousand dollars and soon starts an unconventional romantic relationship with an emo-girl named Ella. She is the only one that does not look like a gold-digger to Max. The sweetest thing in any new relationship for Max is not sex, not even the first kiss, it is those last few seconds just before the kiss, when it is clear that the kiss is about to happen. Even if the actual kiss fails to materialise later for whatever reason, this moment of anticipation, this incredible moment, silence, slight numbness, adrenaline rush, the chill, the convergence of the lips, as if by accident...And then this feeling of warmth and euphoria starting to spread in the body. As Max's affair with Ella continues to evolve, a string of suicides hits this seemingly happy and quiet town. Suicides follow a pattern and affect young people about to turn twenty one. Set in modern day Russia and written by four times Debut Prize finalist Andrei Kuzechkin, this novel offers an intriguing detective story, based on author's own personal experiences and investigations revealing, on one hand, many failures of modern society to hear and understand young people, and inability of young people to face reality and grow up, on the other. Complex issues affecting kidults - adults refusing to grow up - are explored in this book amongst other things. Skilfully written narrative includes actual suicide notes, posts and other messages, in the form of song lyrics, videos and blog entries left by those young people who chose to stay forever young. In 2012 Young 4 Ever (Ne Stanu Vzrosloj) received 'Reader's Choice' award from Russia's national literary monthly magazine Ural where it was serialised during 2011.

ISBN 1907832416   Pages 292 ISBN13 9781907832413 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 350 Publisher Max Bollinger   Published in London Imprint Fractal Press   Height (mm) 203 Format Paperback   Width (mm) 133 Publication date 30 Nov 2011   Spine width (mm) 17 DEWEY 891.735   Academic level General DEWEY edition DC23

If anything, this book is thought provoking. The story, peppered with post-Soviet slang is an intimate glimpse at contemporary young people of the country I have long left. Seemingly nonchalant in places, it does touch upon such serious questions as life and death, the value of life, and reason for living, as related to so-called 'kidults' - young people 'refusing' to grow up, but in this novel, they mean it literally. Here is my favorite quote from the book (as I translate it from Russian): '..every person lives in that reality which he creates for himself, therefore we shouldn't say that reality is one and the same for everybody and that we all have to adapt to it'. How is that for 'food for thought'? - All in all, notwithstanding the gap between my generation and that of the protagonist, I didn't feel excluded from the drama - and that's a sure sign of a promising writer. - Irene Rudra, Texas, USA An honest and open story of someone who is clearly capable of understanding pains of others and who is seemingly trying to resolve his own problems by joining a group of young people who want to remain forever young, who choose to end their life because they don't see a way out of their daily conflicts. Our hero is not a looser, he is a successful professional gamer. He is trying to understand together with us and these young people, why his life suddenly does not work out the way he wants or the way it works out in his virtual reality. Each chapter begins with a confession, a suicidal note which isn't filled with pain or fear of death. A simple letter of someone saying good bye to life, to the colours and emotions of life. I felt strange, do they really understand what they are giving up? How can we know for sure that life does not get better as we get older? As I reached the end of the book, it did surprise me again. Definitely worth a read, so insightful. It is a real confession of forever young. Going through their life and their experiences it helped me understand my own life better. - Vlada Antropova, Russia I rarely indulge in promoting so-called 'young authors' mainly because there are very few truly talented writers among them. But every once in a while I bump into something that sounds like music to my ears. It is my pleasure to introduce Andrei Kuzechkin and his latest novel "Young 4 Ever". I got so excited, that was reading for two days non-stop. Contemporary writing at its best. Written in fairly simple modern lingo, but not primitive. Enticing fresh plot - I got hooked from the very first page. And of course always good to be able to see what boys really think. - Julia, Russia Issues 1 and 2 of Ural magazine published Andrei Kuzechkin's latest novel "Young 4 Ever" where we witness addiction of young people to life in virtual world. Our protagonist is a professional, multiple world champion in computer games, a legend in certain circles of gamers. He travels to a quiet small town and begins to enjoy life of "real" people. A safe town where he is not known. Nothing could possibly go wrong there as local community keeps everything in good order. But one fine day, he witnesses a suicide during a birthday party. He later discovers that this suicide was not the first in town. For some unexplained reason, young people were driven to commit suicide by the age of just twenty one years. This was the end of life for them. - Rezhevskaya Library, Russia

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