The Most Dangerous Place on Earth

Zusatztext 40581604 Informationen zum Autor Lindsey Lee Johnson holds a master of professional writing degree from the University of Southern California and a BA in English from the University of California at Davis. She has served as a tutor and mentor at a private learning center! where her focus has been teaching writing to teenagers. Born and raised in Marin County! she now lives with her husband in Los Angeles. Klappentext In an edenic community of wealthy families! Molly Nicholl! a teacher from a poor city arrives in the middle of the school year and becomes intrigued by the hidden lives of her privileged students. Unknown to her! a tragedy from middle school continues to reverberate. These teens are navigating a world in which every action may become public! a world that Molly finds both alluring and dangerous. ***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof*** Copyright © 2016 Lindsey Lee Johnson THE NOTE Cally Broderick lingered in the doorway of the resource office, waiting to be noticed. She would have been easy to overlook. She was short and skinny, and her dirty-blond hair had begun that year to wave and shine with oil. Her hazel eyes were pretty, though too wide-set, her nose thin but too long. Every four weeks her face produced a constellation of pimples that loomed and gleamed when she turned her cheek to the mirror, disgusting and enthralling her. Her face was a question she considered daily, widening her eyes in the mirror on the inside of her locker, sucking the flesh of her cheeks between her teeth. Her mother said—or used to say—that Cally was “striking looking,” a description Cally rejected: it was not only vaguely violent sounding but also patently untrue. She was a restless girl, anxious to rewind her life or jump it forward. In service of the latter goal, she’d made a list of skills to learn before adulthood—how to swallow pills without gagging, to buy tampons without blushing, to shake the hands of her father’s friends without giggling and glancing away. But as the years passed, the list only grew longer: life presented more questions as she lived it, more and more doors to unlock. These questions she didn’t share with anyone. She wrote them in a battered journal, then stuffed the journal in a pillowcase and shoved it under her mattress lest someone—her brother Jake—find it and expose her. She would not even show it to Abigail Cress, her best friend. Prior to Abigail, Cally would have said her best friend was her mother, but that was now impossible, for a multitude of reasons too complex to explain. In fact there was little about her life that Cally Broderick could explain, to herself or to anyone else. She was a girl in middle school. She was thirteen years old. The resource office at Mill Valley Middle School was small and dim—the resource teacher, Ms. Flax, had a moral objection to fluorescent lights, preferring to squint in the amber glow of a ceramic lamp— and stank of mold, and of the pesto pasta that steamed at the teacher’s elbow as she marked papers at her desk. Ms. Flax, over thirty but under fifty, had an apple-shaped body that she wrapped in hippie scarves and tunics and long mud-colored skirts. She was not pretty, Cally decided, but prettyish, with featherweight hair and deep brown eyes that turned down at the corners, making her look on the verge of tears even when she laughed. Across from her sat Tristan Bloch, who flipped through a stack of shiny colored papers on the desk. He was fat and pale with blond hair buzz-cut so close she saw bits of scalp through the glistening bristle; on sunny days at recess his head would glow as if on fire. Everyone at Mill Valley Middle School knew that Tristan spent hours in Ms. Flax’s office, during homeroom, study hall, sometimes recess and lunch. No one knew what they did in there for all that time. Probably she helpe...

Bericht

"The characters in The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, Lindsey Lee Johnson's alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel about the goings-on in and out of a high school in Marin County, Calif., spend most of their time spectacularly failing to see beneath one another's surfaces. . . . Ms. Johnson's characters are unpredictable, contradictory and many things at once, which make them particularly satisfying. . . . Here's high school life in all its madness."-Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

"Told through multiple perspectives, the novel offers a rich portrait of these characters' experiences, laying bare their desires without demeaning the validity of their concerns. . . . [Lindsay Lee] Johnson proves herself a master of the coming-of-age story. . . . With a fearless compassion, Johnson artfully unwraps who these people truly are, as well as whom they claim to be."-The Boston Globe

"In her stunning debut, Johnson . . . explores the fallout among a group of teens-an alpha girl turned stoner, a striving B student, an Ivy League wannabe-who prove, in the end, less entitled than simply empty and searching. An eye-opener."-People (Book of the Week)

"Hard to put down. Johnson's novel possesses a propulsive quality. . . . I read this book in one, long sitting. . . . It is a particularly poignant message for today as we, as a nation, grapple with rising inequality and widespread questioning of the viability of the American dream. We ask, is it dead? But Johnson is asking a different question, a good one. She asks whether there is something fundamentally askew with this bedrock American idea. Her book seems to say, yes, there is something rotten amid the uneven splendor. Just look at the kids who should be the happiest on earth."-Chicago Tribune

"If you are cruising for a quality read that's also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It's a high-wire high school drama."-Elle

"Gripping . . . Each chapter offers a vignette into a more complicated interior life-ones that involve inappropriate student-teacher relationships, cheating on SATs, drugs, sex, and house parties. . . . Lindsey Lee Johnson works a convincing assortment of different voices into her debut."-GQ

"Johnson manages to intensify the perils of adolescence in the same vein as Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep and Celeste Ng's Everything I Never Told You."-San Francisco Magazine

"These characters seem like typical teenagers, but beneath the surface is a dark incident that makes this chilling portrait of growing up in the digital age pretty unputdownable."-PureWow

"A fascinating, often comic, and ultimately heartbreaking read . . . Like Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep, Lindsey Lee Johnson's The Most Dangerous Place on Earth ekes engaging drama out of an upper-crust high school's social politics. . . . In its most insightful moments, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth also reminds us just how moving a teen drama can be."-The Dallas Morning News

"A young high school teacher stumbles on buried secrets in this engrossing, multilayered drama."-Cosmopolitan

"If you are cruising for a quality read that's also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It's a high-wire high school drama."-Elle

"The characters in Lindsey Lee Johnson's debut novel affected me in a way I can't remember feeling since I binge-watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. . . . You'll walk away feeling like you could revisit a hallway drama armed with bulletproof perspective."-Glamour

"Engrossing . . . affluent students become embroiled in high-stakes drama with their teachers and, of course, each other."-InStyle

"In Johnson's excellent debut, her sharp storytelling conveys an authentic sense of the perils of adolescence. . . . Johnson allows these dramas to unfold through various shifting perspectives. . . . She keeps the action brisk and deepens read

Produktdetails

• Autoren: Lindsey Lee Johnson
• Verlag: Random House USA
• Sprache: Englisch
• Produktform: Taschenbuch
• Erschienen: 17.01.2017
• EAN: 9780399589577
• ISBN: 978-0-399-58957-7
• Seiten: 272
• Abmessung: 156 mm x 235 mm x 19 mm
• Thema: Belletristik > Erzählende Literatur