After reading White Boy Shuffle, I thought that Tuff would have to be better. It didn't appear to have any of the flaws that Beatty's debut had. The characters appeared to be more fleshed out, and the story more realistic. How wrong I was.

The main problem with this book was that it meandered too much. There is too much in here about the characters' ordinary lives and not enough action. This book never seemed to be have any sense of pacing or direction anywhere, and when the plot did advance, the whole thing seemed kind of forced. As a result, this book reads like a series of vignettes, rather than a unified novel. Also, Beatty's insistence of mixing low and high culture is irritating. One moment, the characters will be talking in ghetto slang, and the next minute, one of them is talking about his love of 1940's French movies. It just kills the mood that Beatty is trying to create.

Beatty obviously has great promise, but he has again failed to live up to it. I cannot recommend this book. ( )