Not Otherwise Specified
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
From the award-winning author of Break and Teeth comes a raw and honest exploration of complicated identities in a novel about a girl living on the fringe of every fringe group in her small town.
Etta is tired of dealing with all of the labels and categories that seem so important to everyone else in her small Nebraska hometown.
Everywhere she turns, someone feels she’s too fringe for the fringe. Not gay enough for the Dykes, her ex-clique, thanks to a recent relationship with a boy; not tiny and white enough for ballet, her first passion; not sick enough to look anorexic (partially thanks to recovery). Etta doesn’t fit anywhere—until she meets Bianca, the straight, white, Christian, and seriously sick girl in Etta’s therapy group. Both girls are auditioning for Brentwood, a prestigious New York theater academy that is so not Nebraska. Bianca might be Etta’s salvation…but can Etta be saved by a girl who needs saving herself?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Etta knows she doesn't really fit in easy categories: she's a "rich black was-ballerina in Nebraska," who quit her elite ballet company after a choreographer told her to lose weight. Also, bisexual Etta is being shunned and bullied by her lesbian friends, who feel betrayed because she briefly dated a boy. As Etta focuses on recovering from an eating disorder, she learns about open auditions for scholarships to an arts school in Manhattan. But when she befriends two other applicants, a talented but troubled singer struggling with anorexia and her gay older brother, Etta must decide why she is working so hard to get accepted. Determined and irrepressible, Etta is a memorable narrator with smart insights into the particular challenges of bisexual teens ("If I end up marrying a guy, what the hell queer community is ever going to want me?"). However, Moskowitz (Teeth) doesn't fully explore several of the issues she raises, which include eating disorders and codependent relationships, making them feel somewhat scripted. Ages 14 up.
