Practical Jean: A Novel

by Trevor Cole

Overview

Jean wouldn’t be able stand it if something unfortunate were to befall her friends—that’s why decides to kill them herself, before anything else can harm them. Bad Marie meets Arsenic and Old Lace in this darkly humorous story of a woman whose overpowering love for her friends moves her to murder each and every one of them. Practical Jean, the U.S. debut of acclaimed Canadian author Trevor Cole, is a “biting and black comedy of middle-class mores gone murderously wrong” that “combines diamond-cut social satire with thoughtful contemplations of friendship” (Globe and Mail). A deliciously dark satire with roots that spread from Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal to Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands, Cole’s Practical Jean is a razor’s edge dissection of relationships, faithfulness, and homicide. After all, what are friends for?

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780062082534
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	10/18/2011
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	320
File size:	1 MB

About the Author

TREVOR COLE is an award-winning journalist and novelist. His journalism has garnered him twenty-five National Magazine Award nominations and nine awards. His novels, which include most recently Hope Makes Love, have been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction twice and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. Cole lives in Toronto.

What People are Saying About This

Marcy Dermansky

“PRACTICAL JEAN practically blew my mind. Trevor Cole’s twisted novel about Jean Vale Horemash, a friend so devoted she will commit murder, is not only deliciously funny - it is also surprisingly, heartbreakingly poignant.”

Editorial Reviews

…a tidy social comedy with some very dark dimensions…Though Cole can fashion a nicely creepy little murder scene, he's most knowing and natural when documenting the quotidian details of Jean's life.
—The New York Times Book Review

Meg Wolitzer

Amusing yet horrifying . . . Exceeding the predictable by a long shot, [PRACTICAL JEAN] will beguile readers possessing a sardonic streak as well those who appreciate gallows humor.” — Booklist

“Those who enjoy Zoë Heller’s mordant take on female friendship (Notes on a Scandal) or the black humor of such classic films as Arsenic and Old Lace and Kind Hearts and Coronets will appreciate this fine social satire.” — Library Journal

“PRACTICAL JEAN practically blew my mind. Trevor Cole’s twisted novel about Jean Vale Horemash, a friend so devoted she will commit murder, is not only deliciously funny - it is also surprisingly, heartbreakingly poignant.” — Marcy Dermansky, author of Bad Marie

“A cagey satirical noir .…Wicked humor glints kitchen-knife bright as the unhinged Jean blithely traverses the suburbs dispensing her most intimate friends.” — Publishers Weekly

“A tidy social commentary with some very dark dimensions.” — New York Times Book Review

From the Publisher

PRACTICAL JEAN practically blew my mind. Trevor Cole’s twisted novel about Jean Vale Horemash, a friend so devoted she will commit murder, is not only deliciously funny - it is also surprisingly, heartbreakingly poignant.

Marcy Dermansky

A tidy social commentary with some very dark dimensions.

New York Times Book Review

Amusing yet horrifying . . . Exceeding the predictable by a long shot, [PRACTICAL JEAN] will beguile readers possessing a sardonic streak as well those who appreciate gallows humor.

Booklist

Amusing yet horrifying . . . Exceeding the predictable by a long shot, [PRACTICAL JEAN] will beguile readers possessing a sardonic streak as well those who appreciate gallows humor.

Booklist

A mourning suburban daughter takes out her grief via murder.

Canadian novelist Cole (The Fearsome Particles, 2006, etc.) generates a bleak satire in his third outing, which falls somewhere betweenHeathersandThe Stepford Wiveson the vicious meter. "Everything began when Jean Vale Horemarsh had to look after her mother, Marjorie, who was dying of a terrible cancer in one of the soft organs," writes Cole in the clinical, eccentric style that characterizes the novel. It seems that the experience of looking after her dying mother has taught suburban potter Jean the true meaning of mercy, after a fashion. And oh how strange the woman's head can get. She almost pathologically ignores the failings of her marriage to her milquetoast husband Milt, who turns out to be having an affair with a friend, in her quest to ensure that her friends never suffer the indignities of old age. For starters, Jean takes her slutty friend Dorothy out for a night of drinking, skinny-dipping and fooling around with the local lads, before chopping her head off with a dull shovel. No less bizarre is Jean's lesbian liaison ("a little unexpected") with a college chum, ending with a poison-inducing back rub. For all its gruesomeness, there are reasons behind Jean's obsession, and the creepiest scenes are in fact outclassed by the book's more disquieting pauses. Among these disturbances is a flashback to Jean's childhood, during which she methodically drowns all of her stuffed animals in response to her mother's euthanasia of a litter of puppies, and a quiet interlude at a park where Jean shuffles her friends' names about on slips of paper, trying to elect her first victim based on her affections.

A shudder-inducing satire that meditates more on the dysfunctions of the living than on the tragedies of the dead.

Kirkus Reviews