Summary & Evaluation: Anthony "Spoon" Witherspoon has returned home to Harlem, after having his first semester in a prep school in Connecticut, eager to see his family but, most of all, his girlfriend Gabi. His return isn't as triumphant as he expected it to be, as he finds himself surrounded by friends whom he realizes will never escape the ghetto lifestyle --and he's met with the horrifying reality that Gabi has collapsed under the pressures of keeping her family together and started to use heroin. Torn between the two lives he has--that of prep school, with his new friends and a promising future, and his life in Harlem, which has quickly become alienating now that he's left--Anthony helps Gabi to overcome her addiction while committing himself to his new future.
At times this novel felt a little "light" because the subject matter was pretty dark and lonely (an adored girlfriend now a junkie, all past friends either street thugs or just unfriendly) but the mood didn't follow the subject--all too often Anthony was helped out by his family (they were understanding almost to a fault), his new friends (a girl from prep school that has the hots for Anthony helps find a dress for Gabi to borrow, because she doesn't have one for her mother's funeral), and total strangers (a teenage junkie helps Anthony find Gabi when she's disappeared into a crack house). Sure, life sucks a little for Anthony, but it gets difficult to feel bad for him when one of the biggest problems he has is whether or not he should feel bad for making out with his new prep school girlfriend while Gabi's strung out on junk. At times you just get the feeling that as long as Anthony goes back to prep school everything will be okay--but boy, oh boy, are those people stuck in Harlem in for a tough life.
Booktalk Hook: All its imperfections aside, The Beast is still an example of why Walter Dean Myers is considered an exemplary YA author--he can create a (somewhat) believable scenario, introduce characters that people care about, and do it in a succinct manner, without writing hundreds of pages. So, if I were to booktalk The Beast, I'd begin by asking the question of whether or not anyone had ever left their friends for a couple of months (perhaps while going to camp over the summer?) and returned to find that things have changed. What would happen if you came back to find out that they were addicted to drugs? Well, Walter Dean Myer's The Beast is all about how one person deals with returning home to find his girlfriend hooked on heroin . . . .
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