I was totally mesmerized by UNDISCOVERED GYRL by Allison Burnett. Katie, our blogger, is brash, raunchy, obscene, and somehow completely sympathetic and vulnerable. She is naturally beautiful and intelligent, but without any strong parental guidance (her parents are divorced—her mom’s a pushover and her dad’s a drunk), she runs wild. She drinks, she smokes, she sleeps around…. Katie is clearly a mess, but as I mentioned before she’s got spunk and attitude and a charming self-awareness. She knows what she’s doing is wrong and abnormal for a teenager, but she can’t help herself. The blog format brings a real immediacy and candor to the novel and makes Katie really come to life.
By Tim O’Connell on 4/14/09
I read it straight through—on trains, buses, at dinner, whenever I had a second—and was always happy, if not slightly eager, to return to it. I liked the narrator’s voice. I also like that this taps into a number of contemporary issues surrounding the internet—privacy, identity, safety, etc.
I was totally mesmerized by UNDISCOVERED GYRL by Allison Burnett. Katie, our blogger, is brash, raunchy, obscene, and somehow completely sympathetic and vulnerable. She is naturally beautiful and intelligent, but without any strong parental guidance (her parents are divorced—her mom’s a pushover and her dad’s a drunk), she runs wild. She drinks, she smokes, she sleeps around…. Katie is clearly a mess, but as I mentioned before she’s got spunk and attitude and a charming self-awareness. She knows what she’s doing is wrong and abnormal for a teenager, but she can’t help herself. The blog format brings a real immediacy and candor to the novel and makes Katie really come to life.
I read it straight through—on trains, buses, at dinner, whenever I had a second—and was always happy, if not slightly eager, to return to it. I liked the narrator’s voice. I also like that this taps into a number of contemporary issues surrounding the internet—privacy, identity, safety, etc.