Palo Alto

It's crazy how much time I've had to read this weekend. I managed to finish my book by James Franco called Palo Alto Stories in one day. I liked how the book was a collection of different teenagers stories, although most are pretty inappropriate to discuss. In general, most of the teens were struggling with drugs, alcohol, and sexual abuse. It's a pretty intense book with lots of strong feelings, including hatred, jealousy, and lust. In the first chapter, a character describes a drunken night he had a long time ago when he accidentally ran over a woman with his car and abandoned her. Most of the experiences these kids went to (some were even in 7th grade) were disturbing and shocking. It's crazy the amount of trouble and bad choices they all made. I really loved the style of the book and how raw it was, but I would Franco could have focused a little more about positive events in their lives. Although I think that was his intent in writing such a powerful book. Franco wants readers to realize the roughness teens can go through. Maybe he wanted to reach out to troubled teens to let them know they aren't alone, and to make the lucky ones aware of disturbing circumstances that exist. Palo Alto was one of the most interesting and in the raw stories I have read and I think that's why I couldn't put it down all day.
The picture above is the beautiful portrait of James Franco I got to look at every time I opened my book, how lucky am I?