Nine Digits

by Jay Duret

Overview

Nine Digits tells the story of Nee-Nee Marcus, a headstrong 15 year old girl from Philadelphia, who despises her family: her clueless parents, her nasty brothers, her evil sister. She would do anything to be free of them. When she hears about a new reality television program that will award a prize of $100 million, she decides she'll do whatever it takes to win. Money may not be everything, but with $100 million she is pretty sure that she will never have to deal with her family again...

"Nine Digits is the best book since The Phantom Tollbooth."
-Tim Grose

"Daniel Pinkwater, move over. Here comes Jay Duret. If you have ever been or ever will be a teenager wanting to dump your family, read this wildly funny, page-turner of a book."
-Mally Cox-Chapman, author Baggywrinkle

Product Details

BN ID:	2940046434132
Publisher:	Indigo Sea Press
Publication date:	11/28/2014
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	1 MB
Age Range:	12 Years

About the Author

Jay is a San Francisco based writer and illustrator. He has written hundreds of stories.
You can read some at www.jayduret.com.
Nine Digits is Jay's first novel.

Editorial Reviews

2015-03-03
An eccentric family competes in a reality show in Duret's debut YA novel.The Marcus family of Philadelphia—Skunky, Golden Boy, Barkus, Marticus, Nee Nee, and their parents, Airball and Saint Marcus—are selected to compete in a new, national reality show, where they're woefully overmatched by the hardy, athletic Ponchatrains from New Orleans and the intellectually gifted Perfects from Boston. As the competition takes off and its producer, Buzzemiah Miller, mounts an extensive promotional campaign, readers get to know the Marcuses and their competitors in multilayered ways: through their behind-the-scenes interactions, their performances in various "challenges," and their glossy, manufactured images, presented to and consumed by the show's millions of viewers. The vain, attention-seeking Nee Nee, the oldest Marcus daughter, functions as the main protagonist as her family and their TV fans look for substance and redemption in the most unlikely places. A quote on the novel's back cover compares it to Norton Juster's 1961 classic The Phantom Tollbooth, and after a somewhat slow start, Duret's book really does begin to approach the witty, imaginative, and accessible brilliance of that genre-busting work. It isn't a fantasy—there's no mystical land, unless Hollywood qualifies as such, and everything seems to follow generally accepted rules of time and space. Nevertheless, the story does have elements of the supremely absurd that are delightfully amusing and fiendishly clever. While staying focused on the action, Duret makes incisive, thought-provoking comments about what we value, as individuals and as a culture, when it comes to family, work, competition, education, and entertainment. His lively, slightly snarky prose is also a perfect fit with the material ("He didn't seem as much to have a tan as to be entitled to one"). Overall, this book will appeal to fans of all YA genres—and their parents as well.An action-filled story full of funny, topical, and sympathetic observations about the world today.

Kirkus Reviews