Clown Girl
A Novel
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4.1 • 29 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
As Drake's debut opens, Nita, otherwise known as Sniffles the Clown, is tying balloon animals for a horde of greedy, sticky children at a fair. Suffering what may be a cardiac event, she's rushed to the hospital after trying to get help from a clown fetishist, who simply drops his phone number on top of her prone form. Welcome to wacky, stressful Baloneytown, where clown prostitution, stoned dogs and fire juggling cum arson are the norm. Nita struggles to make enough money clowning to keep herself in oversized shoes and squirting daisies, while also saving for Clown College tuition for her boyfriend, handsome clown Rex Galore. But Rex is mostly MIA, and Nita's longing for him settles on local cop Jerrod. While not much happens, the pace of the narrative is methamphetamine-frantic, as Drake drills down past the face paint and into Nita's core, often using Nita's relations with men as the bit. Nita emerges as a fully-realized character, bearing witness to a lot of the emotionally ridiculous and just a hint of the sublime. Some plot threads never quite come together, and a few characters are underdeveloped, but there is a lot more going on here than just clowning around.
Customer Reviews
Loved
This is an excellent read from start to finish. I sampled this one and then took a break From it to finish a semester. I returned to it and bought the whole thing. It's hilarious but darkly existential.
A win.
This is probably my favorite book of all time. Even though I'm not a clown, I could totally relate. Drake is a wonderful writer, it was touching and down right hilarious at times.
This is your life!
Or at least it could be. It could certainly be mine. This is a classic story about the horrors of realizing the difference between the dreams we have for ourselves and the realities of what actually is. Only, this story's about a clown named Sniffles with a place called Baloneytown as the backdrop. For many of us, this a brilliantly accurate manifestation of a classic story. Five stars for being fun and funny as much as it is depressing and too real. Much like a clown.