The Blonde of the Joke

September 14, 2009
Madison's (the Lulu Dark series) surreal novel elevates suburbia—and the mall in particular—to an almost mythic status, at once mundane and rife with potential. Timid high school student Valentina's life changes dramatically when new girl Francie flounces into class wearing a lime green “whore's raincoat,” meant to cover up the aqua tube top and gold hot pants she's wearing underneath (“Francie was that kind of girl. Blonde. Big boobs. Total slut”). Francie, a force of nature, befriends Val, giving her an exuberant new look, teaching her to shoplift and awakening a whole other side of the girl. But exterior radiance doesn't mask the inner problems both girls wrestle with. Madison's dreamlike prose imbues the most ordinary of moments with cosmic significance (“At the mall, in the beginning of October, there was this whiff of something: like newness, or the future. Or maybe I was just mistaking the smell of Cinnabons and makeup”). It can occasionally feel like the story is about to sink under the portentousness of it all, but it's more likely that readers will soak up every bit of it. Ages 14–up.

November 1, 2008
Gr 9 Up-Val, friendless and adrift, finds Francie and adopts her religious devotion to slutty ensembles and shoplifting. Off-kilter humor, moody narration, and twisted psychology make this sardonic exploration of suburbia thrillinglike pocketing lip gloss and walking right out of the store. In Madison's hands, tacky becomes fabulous and wrong weirdly morphs into holy. The girls rock conservative Sandra Dee High with gold lamé hot pants, big boobs, bigger hair, and heavy eyeliner. They travel daily to the glimmering Montgomery Shoppingtowne Mall to perfect the black art of stealing. Val and Francie zealously try to strip the place to its cement foundation. Contempt for false edifice and for the superficial frameworks behind home, school, and the mall fuel their obsessive devotion to thievery. Analytical readers will recognize metaphorical expressions of teen malaise throughout. A circuitous creek strings together teens living inside cookie-cutter houses with unnaturally green yards. However, Madison's metaphors, while fascinating, often remain too murky, and character motivations remain unclear. When Val finally dumps Francie, readers aren't exactly sure why. Francie's unfunny blond jokes and even Val's mysteriously dying brother never feel fully worked out, perhaps even in the author's mind. But Madison's tinkering with unclear, unexplained happenings also provides this imaginative novel with its wild-haired beauty. Dreamy collisions of reality and fantasy, of the nonsensical and impossible, make for a magical, slippery read."Shelley Huntington, New York Public Library"

Copyright 2008 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 15, 2009
Grades 8-11 A blonde and a brunette walk into a mall and shoplift their friendship into a decadent demise. Val (the brunette) is completely invisible as she roams the halls of Sandra Dee High. After the new girl, Francie (the blonde), entrances Val, the two quickly become best friends, and Francie teaches Val the art of stealing. Vals obsessive devotion to Francie gives way to dissension when she realizes that Francies confidence belies the fact that shes really a scared young girl. As the mall on the hill turns into a temple rising high above the blank expanse of suburbia, Val and Francie take what they please from it, literally searching for the Holy Grail that will cure Vals dying brother. Madisons honest and darkly comic prose takes this mall-rat tale to mythical heights. The punchline is definitely bittersweet and will leave a good many readers anticipating Madisons next book.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)