The Blonde of the Joke

by Bennett Madison

Overview

"There are three and only three rules for shoplifting," Francie instructed me.

From the very first day Val meets the outrageously blond Francie, she realizes that Francie has the gutsy courage and determination Val has always envied. But Francie sees something in Val too—something that Val's never noticed. "You've got that sneaky thing about you," she says. "I bet you have a dark past."

And just like that, the blonde and the brunette become partners in crime.

Thanks to Francie, Val is suddenly taking risks, taking charge, and taking what she deserves. But as the stakes get higher, Francie and Val find themselves more and more tangled in a thrilling web of love, lies, and shoplifting. Soon it becomes clear that the darkest secrets have yet to be discovered. . . .

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780061948138
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	08/25/2009
Sold by:	HARPERCOLLINS
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	354 KB
Age Range:	14 - 17 Years

About the Author

Bennett Madison is the author of several books for young people, including The Blonde of the Joke. He attended Sarah Lawrence College but remains two classes shy of graduation. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Editorial Reviews

Madison's (the Lulu Dark series) surreal novel elevates suburbia—and the mall in particular—to an almost mythic status, at once mundane and rife with potential. Timid high school student Valentina's life changes dramatically when new girl Francie flounces into class wearing a lime green “whore's raincoat,” meant to cover up the aqua tube top and gold hot pants she's wearing underneath (“Francie was that kind of girl. Blonde. Big boobs. Total slut”). Francie, a force of nature, befriends Val, giving her an exuberant new look, teaching her to shoplift and awakening a whole other side of the girl. But exterior radiance doesn't mask the inner problems both girls wrestle with. Madison's dreamlike prose imbues the most ordinary of moments with cosmic significance (“At the mall, in the beginning of October, there was this whiff of something: like newness, or the future. Or maybe I was just mistaking the smell of Cinnabons and makeup”). It can occasionally feel like the story is about to sink under the portentousness of it all, but it's more likely that readers will soak up every bit of it. Ages 14–up. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly

Gr 9 Up

Val, friendless and adrift, finds Francie and adopts her religious devotion to slutty ensembles and shoplifting. Off-kilter humor, moody narration, and twisted psychology make this sardonic exploration of suburbia thrilling-like pocketing lip gloss and walking right out of the store. In Madison's hands, tacky becomes fabulous and wrong weirdly morphs into holy. The girls rock conservative Sandra Dee High with gold lamé hot pants, big boobs, bigger hair, and heavy eyeliner. They travel daily to the glimmering Montgomery Shoppingtowne Mall to perfect the black art of stealing. Val and Francie zealously try to strip the place to its cement foundation. Contempt for false edifice and for the superficial frameworks behind home, school, and the mall fuel their obsessive devotion to thievery. Analytical readers will recognize metaphorical expressions of teen malaise throughout. A circuitous creek strings together teens living inside cookie-cutter houses with unnaturally green yards. However, Madison's metaphors, while fascinating, often remain too murky, and character motivations remain unclear. When Val finally dumps Francie, readers aren't exactly sure why. Francie's unfunny blond jokes and even Val's mysteriously dying brother never feel fully worked out, perhaps even in the author's mind. But Madison's tinkering with unclear, unexplained happenings also provides this imaginative novel with its wild-haired beauty. Dreamy collisions of reality and fantasy, of the nonsensical and impossible, make for a magical, slippery read.-Shelley Huntington, New York Public Library

School Library Journal

The reinvention of good-girl Valentina Martinez comes in the guise of a hootchie makeover and shoplifting, all thanks to her naughty new best friend Francie Knight, who walks into class the first day of school wearing nothing but an aqua tube top and gold hot pants. Francie takes Val under her wing: She cuts and bleaches her hair, bestows on her similarly skimpy clothes, and the two hit the mall. Readers may well be dumbfounded that Val so easily slides into the life of a criminal, but Madison builds Val's desperation for attention and friendship so convincingly that they have no choice but to go with it. The Gap, Spencer Gifts and other familiar suburban haunts all fall victim to their exploits; Madison's snarky, near-satirical tone, chock-a-block with dozens of hilarious "oh no she didn't!" moments, keeps the plot from getting too cautionary. What results is a ridiculous, riotous, tongue-in-cheek mad dash through the mall where everything is not as it seems and where the cheap jokes and the bounty grow like apples on trees. (Fiction. YA)

Kirkus Reviews

Madison’s honest and darkly comic prose takes this mall-rat tale to mythical heights. The punchline is definitely bittersweet and will leave a good many readers anticipating Madison’s next book.

Booklist

You will fall in love with The Blonde of the Joke the moment you enter its mall-wandering, skater-boy loving, dark secret-hiding world. Poetic and punchy, sarcastic and true, I gobbled this up and was left wanting so much more.

Sara Shepard

A delightfully wicked book—a supersexy celebration of good girls gone bad, and a haunting ode to teenage rebellion.

James St. James

The Blonde of the Joke turns a dull suburban landscape into a mythical place, full of treasure, inner demons, and transformations. Bennett Madison is one of the best YA writers around and this is his sharpest book to date.

Maureen Johnson

This wickedly funny novel has it all—style, depth, bite, and a punch line you won’t be able to forget.

Sarah Mlynowski