Drama queen
Book not yet available in English
Summary:
If you’re like Angel, you would easily come across as an aggressive girl. But anyone would be, living in a neighborhood so dangerous that even pizza places don’t dare deliver, with a feisty mom who works as a stripper and none of your stupid classmates who want to be your friend. Kayleigh, however, is different: she is the smartest in the class, she is always ready to help with tests, but most of all she is beautiful, and when she smiles at her, Angel feels that armor she has built around herself melt away. A funny, painful, honest and moving novel. [Publisher’s website].
Edited by: Centro MeTRa - Università di Bologna (Italy)
Comment:
A wry and exciting coming-of-age novel with a trio of hard-to-miss protagonists in a difficult and degraded social context that we hardly associate with the Netherlands. Angel, a rebellious and nonconformist teenager, falls in love with her new classmate, Kayleigh, who is serious and intelligent. For a long time she cannot name the feelings she has for her, but little by little, everything becomes clearer. In the background is the relationship with her mother, a young stripper who, although she does not fit the canons of traditional motherhood, shows great sensitivity and respect for her daughter. There is also room for an alcoholic grandfather, a man worn down by life but still capable of love and care. In short, a novel that tells a beautiful story, which depicts feelings and real life, in which the rawness of some situations makes even more extraordinary the protagonists’ will and ability to be all right and happy in spite of everything. A novel that is “unsettling in the painful elaboration of adolescence, and important for its depiction of a love between two girls, with the grace and delicacy reserved for any first love” (Liberweb).