How I Paid for College
A Tale of Sex, Theft, Friendship and Musical Theater
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- 8,49 €
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- 8,49 €
Descripción editorial
'A comic coming-of-age novel ... it's an exuberant caper with good period detail and ironic wit' Independent on Sunday
'As engaging, funny and precocious as its narrator, this is a feel-good nostalgic novel' Daily Mail
It's 1983, and in a sleepy community in New Jersey seventeen-year-old Edward Zanni is Peter Panning his way through a carefree summer of magic and mischief. However, the fun comes to a halt when his father refuses to pay for Edward to study acting at Julliard.
Edward's truly in a bind. He's ineligible for scholarships because his father earns too much. And, in a sure sign that he's destined for a life in the arts, Edward's incapable of holding down a job. So he turns to his loyal (but immoral) friends to help him steal the tuition fees from his father, all the while practising for their high school performance of Grease.
Disguising themselves as nuns and priests, they merrily scheme their way through embezzlement, money-laundering, identity theft, forgery and blackmail. But along the way, Edward also learns the value of friendship, hard work and how you're not really a man until you can beat up your father, metaphorically or otherwise.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Portland humor columnist Acito debuts with dazzling comic panache in this story of a teenage would-be swindler and budding drama queen. Edward Zanni is dying to escape boring Wallingford, N.J., for the hallowed halls of Juilliard, and he's got a pretty good chance at it. It's summer, and he's palling around with his fellow Play People, who include his gorgeous girlfriend, Kelly, and his hot jock pal, Doug, and dreaming of stardom. The fly in the ointment is Zanni's money-obsessed father, Al, who pulls the financial plug on Edward's Juilliard dream after marrying a trophy babe, a beautiful, icy Teutonic model named Dagmar. Edward counters dad's penny-pinching by moving in with Kelly's family to establish financial independence for a scholarship, but bombs at several minimum-wage jobs. How will he pay for college now that his audition really a public mental breakdown got him in? His devious buddy, Nathan, concocts a plan to steal from gold-digging Dagmar, who's been siphoning Al's cash into a secret account. Edward and pals set up a fake nonprofit designed to award a Juilliard scholarship to someone born in Hoboken (Edward) but there's a problem. Acito nails his scenes one after another, from Edward's shifting (but always enthusiastic) sexuality to the silly messes he gets himself into. The result is a thumbs-up winner from a storyteller whose future looks as bright as that of his young hero.
