Cruddy: An Illustrated Novel
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Books › Fiction › Humorous › General
ISBN: 068483846X / Publisher: Simon & Schuster, October 2000
On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping acid, a sixteen-year-old...
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On a September night in 1971, a few days after getting busted for dropping acid, a sixteen-year-old curls up in the corner of her ratty bedroom and begins to write. <br> <i>Now the truth can finally be revealed about the mysterious day long ago when the authorities found a child, calmly walking in the boiling desert, covered with blood.</i> <br> The girl is Roberta Rohbeson, and her rant against a world bounded by "the cruddy top bedroom of a cruddy rental house on a very cruddy mud road" soon becomes a detailed account of another story, one that she has kept silent since she was eleven. <br> Darkly funny and resonant with humanity, <i>Cruddy,</i> masterfully intertwines Roberta's stories -- part <i>Easy Rider</i> and part bipolar <i>Wizard of Oz.</i> These stories, the backbone of Roberta's short life, include a one-way trip across America fueled by revenge and greed and a vivid cast of characters, starring Roberta's dangerous father, the owners of the Knocking Hammer Bar-cum-slaughterhouse, and runaway adolescents. With a teenager's eye for freakish detail and a nervous ability to make the most horrible scenes seem hilarious, <i>Cruddy</i> is a stunning achievement.
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