Friday, April 13, 2007

Better Than Running at Night, by Hillary Frank

Ellie arrives for her first year of art school and immediately meets the devil (and Elvis!) at a party. Actually, it's a guy named Nate, but in the end the relationship she develops with the clingy (yet unfaithful) Nate will become a sort of unhealthy association. Meanwhile, Ellie is also struggling to express herself artistically and grapple with the fact that her father is not her biological Dad.

This is a messy book, but has an element of realism to it, in the sense that life is not a convenientdramatic arc. The problem is that life can be dull too and there were sections of this story that truly put me to sleep (of course, reading the book on my 7am flight doesn't help!). I give the story high marks for realism and strong characterization but I wanted a more coherent story.

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