Kung Fu High School; Ryan Gattis

"Fifteen-year-old Jen B is a student at Kung Fu High School, a place where violence is routine and the only goal is survival. But keeping her head down becomes impossible with the arrival of her cousin, Jimmy Chang, a Chinese-trained kung fu master who became notorious after vanishing into thin air during a fight. Ridley, leader of the school's most vicious gang, wants to see what Jimmy can do. The only problem is Jimmy's sworn never to fight again ...Jen struggles to cope with the sudden murder of her brother, an ailing father, and an uncomfortable attraction for Jimmy, while tension at school builds to a dramatic final showdown. Razor-sharp and unexpectedly moving, KUNG FU HIGH SCHOOL stamps on the throat of the American Dream."

If I ever get the opportunity to adapt a book to film, or write a HBO series based on a novel, the first place I will go to is my bookshelf to pick out my copy of Kung Fu High School.

I use superlatives pretty freely on here (because I like almost everything I read), but Kung Fu High School is the kind of book that sticks with you. It's a work of breath taking power. If Tarantino dropped the dialogue and just filmed violence, it might look like this. It's not a pleasant read. It's neither cathartic or comfortable. Make no bones of it, this is a truly horrible book. But it's also incredibly real.

Originally conceived in the wake of the Columbine shootings, Kung Fu High School imagines a school system so desensitized to violence and so throughly corrupted and forgotten about that every day is a (literal) battle for survival. Every pupil belongs to a gang, the most powerful person in the school is the drug dealer who owns the staff, local police, media and politicians, and maiming or death are a routine hazard of daily life.

Through the course of the book main characters die with reckless abandon - bones are snapped, people are shot, stabbed and kicked to death. Unflinching explanations of eye-gouging, flesh rending violence starts on the first page and runs to the end.

Few words are wasted, creating a storyline that rushes towards the inevitable total destruction of every character and the whole system of violence. It's startlingly compelling, and I found that I could remember vividly much of the plot despite not having read it since it was newly published, nearly 8 years ago.

It is, frankly, AMAZING. It's also out of print, and that shouldn't surprise you, because it's incredible that this book was ever published. But you should definitely read it, and I think (I hope) you'll like it.

And maybe, one day, you'll get to see the film.

Also Try:

Melvin Burgess, Bloodtide

Koushun Takami, Battle Royale

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games