<div>Life is pretty sweet for Even Hyde. Despite his parent’s divorce in 2001, he’s doing just fine, having chosen to live with his richly successful father in fancy Newport Beach. When not spending ?bonding’ time with his partially absent father, he has his run of the apartment where he more or less comes and goes as he pleases.<BR><BR>That is, except, when his older brother Gabe comes to visit on the weekends. Currently living in seedy Cucamonga with their emotionally unstable mother, Gabe is everything that Even is not. It’s clear that of the two close brothers there is a ?good” brother and a ?bad” brother, and Gabe falls under the ?bad’ category. But just how bad could Gabe really be? Even doesn’t seem to be too frightened of Gabe’s quick-to-ignite temper or his evolving addiction to skipping school and smoking weed.<br><BR>But then Gabe commits a crime so unbelievably heinous that Even can’t forgive his own flesh and blood for it. In his dramatic recounting for <I>Little Brother</I>, Even shares the events leading up to and immediately following Gabe and two of his friends savagely gang raping an unconscious girl, while videotaping the whole thing. When Gabe somehow ends up losing the video tape (which ends up in Even’s hand) it is up to Even to make the life-changing decision: does he do the right thing and turn his own brother in to the police, or does family come first before anything else?<BR><BR>This jaw-dropping novel, reminiscent of Louise Erdrich’s <I>The Round House</I> and Herman Koch’s <I>The Dinner</I>, shows how cruel the awfulness of human behavior can be and how sometimes even the right decisions feel wrong no matter what.<BR></div>