Rumble Fish

Rumble Fish is a novel for young adults by the American writer S. E. Hinton, published in 1975. It was her third book, after The Outsiders and That Was Then, This Is Now, and it was adapted for film by Francis Ford Coppola in 1983.

The novel is framed by a chance meeting. Rusty-James sees his old friend Steve Hays on the beach, five years after they last met. Steve is in college; Rusty is not long out of the reformatory. When Steve notices the scar on Rusty's side, Rusty says he got it in a knife fight, and Steve, who was there, corrects him.

That exchange opens the story Rusty tells. At fourteen he spends his time at Benny's pool hall with his friends and with his older brother, the Motorcycle Boy, who is the coolest and toughest figure in the neighbourhood and the person Rusty most wants to be. The novel is short and spare, and its subject is what happens to a boy whose model for living is somebody who cannot survive the life he is admired for.