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Smoking Pigeon Sighted in Rogers Park - review: AN OFF YEAR, by Claire Zulkey
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July 2010
 

smokingpigeon
Date: 2009-06-21 14:41
Subject: review: AN OFF YEAR, by Claire Zulkey
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Tags:reviews

Just got Claire Zulkey's first novel, AN OFF YEAR, young-adult from Dutton.  Really sweet story about a kid who chickens out on her freshman year of college at the dorm room door.  She just turns around and makes her dad take her home.  No stated reason.  She spends the next year working out whatever, very carefully neveridentifying anything specific that somebody could then force her to fix.  My favorite parts are the shrink sessions.  I have a terrible weakness for fictional and cinematicshrinks.

Zulkey's heroine is way true to life.  I want to slap her and yet I know I have been her, so I side with her anyway.

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User: zulkey
Date: 2009-06-22 19:46 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
yay! glad you liked :)
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smokingpigeon
User: smokingpigeon
Date: 2009-06-22 21:38 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
Of COURSE I do! It's about a sulky girl, which is my total alter ego! Well, it's my regular daytime ego too.
J
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User: zulkey
Date: 2009-06-22 21:40 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
that's also my favorite Elvis Costello song
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smokingpigeon
User: smokingpigeon
Date: 2009-06-22 21:46 (UTC)
Subject: (no subject)
So many wonderful Elvis Costello songs.

Did you see him in that recent movie about Cole Porter, singing his own arrangement of "Let's Do It"? Same scene, we got a minor-key version of Begin the Beguine by Sheryl Crowe.
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