Angie

Comment:

If we follow the standard literary genre categories of young-adult fiction, we can say that Angie is a problem novel. The main character is Angie, a teenager who lives with her mother, a never-growing-up hippie gal, and her never-ending string of ever-changing lovers. They have been living without her father ever since he decided one day to hop on a plane, see a Rolling Stones concert, and never return. He left behind his neurotic wife, a teenage daughter who clearly shows she needs her parents, and an old motorcycle because of which his wife still holds out hope that he might return. “He’d never leave without his Harley,” she says drunkenly over and over again, years after Angie has already resigned herself to the fact that her father will never come back. “Mum can’t handle the truth,” is Angie’s response to her delusions. “Fuck it, sometimes folks are so vulnerable and fragile that you have to protect them from the cruelty of the world.” This sentence is one of the keys through which we can read this novel. In it, it is not the children who need to be protected and prepared for life, it is their parents, or rather what is left of them. (From the preface by Ana Duša) The book is targeted at the age range 14+, but it is also suitable for younger readers who are capable of critical independent reading.