Love and other Perishable Items
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- $10.99
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
From the moment 15-year-old Amelia gets an after-school job at the local supermarket she is sunk, gone, lost, head-over-heels in love with Chris. Chris is the funny, charming, man-about- Woolies - but he's 21 and in his final year at uni. The six- year age gap may as well be a hundred.
Chris and Amelia talk about everything from Second Wave Feminism to Great Expectations and Alien, but will he ever look at her in the way she wants him to?
A story that's real and warm and just a little bit heartbreaking.
First published as Good Oil.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set over the course of a year, Buzo's debut, first published in Australia, tracks 15-year-old Amelia as she pines over Chris, a boy six years her senior, who works the checkout with her at a supermarket in New South Wales. Amelia knows that a relationship with Chris is probably impossible, but she can't get him out of her head. From the beginning, Buzo underscores the idea that Chris and Amelia are simply at different stages of their lives (a line Chris even uses on Amelia at one point). Chapters told from Amelia's perspective are all about Chris, even as she vents her frustrations about her parents' relationship and feeling young and na ve. Conversely, Amelia barely warrants a mention in Chris's chapters, diary entries in which he mopes over being dumped by the love of his life and details partying with friends at university. Throughout, readers see how little Amelia really knows about Chris, a powerful bit of dramatic irony. It's a believable and often funny portrait of the messy relationship between a starry-eyed but sharp-witted teenager and a young man stumbling his way into adulthood. Ages 14 up.
