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Clown Girl

by Monica Drake (Goodreads Author), Chuck Palahniuk (Introduction)

3.48 of 5 stars 3.48 · rating details · 1,934 ratings · 224 reviews

Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Cl...more

Paperback, 336 pages

Published January 4th 2007 by Hawthorne Books (first published January 1st 2006)

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Feb 15, 2008 Jason Pettus rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary, character-heavy, dark

(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

I've talked here before concerning the surprising things I'm learning about books these days, now that I've been a daily critic myself for about nine months now, and especially two factors that more heavily influence what we think of a book than a lot of us realize -- of where we in particular are in our own lives when we read the book (in terms of age, experience, career level, etc), and also how much we've hea...more (Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com].)

I've talked here before concerning the surprising things I'm learning about books these days, now that I've been a daily critic myself for about nine months now, and especially two factors that more heavily influence what we think of a book than a lot of us realize -- of where we in particular are in our own lives when we read the book (in terms of age, experience, career level, etc), and also how much we've heard about a book before we've read it ourselves. And really, if you want a perfect example of what I'm talking about, let's take today's book under discussion, Monica Drake's highly popular 2006 debut novel Clown Girl, a book that for a couple of years now has been getting talked about in glowing terms from just a whole pile of people I know and admire; I mean, c'mon, the introduction was written by Chuck Freaking Palahniuk, who by the way happened to be a member of the academic writing workshop where this novel first took shape.

And then I read it. Hmm. And I realized that it's not so much that this novel is truly unique or original that it's been getting so much attention, but that it uses a highly unique and inventive trick for telling an otherwise pretty plain story -- that is, Drake tells the story of a struggling young artist in the corporate world through the metaphor of professional clowns, a gimmick I can literally picture a tableful of dour grad students with tasteful beards and drab GAP sweaters delighting over when first coming across at some summer workshop in some quaint upper-class small town in the Hudson River Valley. Because admittedly, the gimmick is a cute one, one that can be stretched further than you ever thought a "clown in the corporate world" one could; how our unstable hero Nita got into the whole industry in the first place for its performance-art qualities, because of the grand tradition of French mimes and Cirque du Soleil and all the rest, but now finds herself working corporate parties and other "red-nose events" in order to pay the bills. And how her fellow-clown boyfriend is off in northern California as we speak, interviewing for "clown college" (i.e. grad school at UC Berkeley); and how she is getting pressured by her lesbian co-workers to get into the erotic/stripper side of the whole clown scene for extra bucks; and how when she misplaces her rubber chicken, she puts up flyers all over the neighborhood as if it were a lost dog. Yeah, cute, like I said, a trick just good enough to hold together an especially strong slam poem or New Yorker short story.

Ah, but here's the problem, that the gimmick wears thin in a 300-page novel; and when it does, you're left with a pretty typical grad-school storyline at its core, one that could be substituted with the plotline of a thousand other stories by grad students without anyone ever being the wiser. Because when all is said and done, Clown Girl is ultimately about unpleasant white slackers in their twenties, deliberately living in sh-tty neighborhoods not because they have to but because they are rejecting their white-bread middle-class backgrounds, pursuing lives as conceptual artists and small-level drug dealers and full-time academes as a way of pushing off real life as long as possible. And this gets into the complication I was talking about -- because I used to like such novels, see, back when I was in my early/mid-twenties myself and living more of that kind of lifestyle myself, and can understand why so many people I respect have been going nuts over this book recently. It's not a bad book, that's the point I really want to hammer home today; it's just that I've read this story way too many times in my life now, a story I find less compelling with each year I get older, a story that ultimately cannot be saved by a literary gimmick no matter how cute that gimmick is.

And this gets into the second complication I mentioned before -- that since I had heard so many great things about this book going into it, I'm tempted to be more disappointed than normal, and to give the novel a lower score than it deserves. And the truth is that it doesn't deserve a low score -- it's a well-written book, after all, a tight and plain-spoken story that you can get through in a single day if you're dedicated. It's just that you need to be careful with this book, to not expect too much out of it, to accept that it's a product of an academic environment and therefore has all the trappings of grad-school literature. Do this and the book is sure to entertain; expect more like I did, and you're bound to be disappointed.

Out of 10: 7.5(less)

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Jan 15, 2009 Ciara rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who want to be annoyed by the book's author

Shelves: read-in-2007

i am re-writing this review & re-rating this book with a lower rating thanks to a barrage of comments from the book's author, as well as the author's obnoxious ass-kissing friends. these folks made me really stop & think about how i felt about this book, & i came to the conclusion that i liked it even less than i thought i did initially. i usually reserve my one-star ratings for true stinkers--books that made me froth with loathing. this book was just disappointing & dull. it was...more i am re-writing this review & re-rating this book with a lower rating thanks to a barrage of comments from the book's author, as well as the author's obnoxious ass-kissing friends. these folks made me really stop & think about how i felt about this book, & i came to the conclusion that i liked it even less than i thought i did initially. i usually reserve my one-star ratings for true stinkers--books that made me froth with loathing. this book was just disappointing & dull. it wasn't really interesting enough to get worked up over, until the author began pestering me about her derivative kafka references & fantastical "imaginative" settings, & then i started to think about how much i loathed the main character of this book: a self-centered, passive, bratty, truly pathetic creature who is an aspiring clown. there was nothing like-able about this character, or any other character in the book. the protaganist has a miscarriage early in the book (off-stage) & spends the rest of the book limping around her setting feeling sorry for herself, wondering if she should try to stick things out with her absent clown boyfriend or give in to a burgeoning romance with a dull cop. this is pretty much the crux of the action: clown boyfriend? new cop boyfriend? clown babies? cop babies? & who took my rubber chicken, which is some sort of pathetic security blanket for the clown relationship? this was actually a rung below chick lit because not only was the female protaganist painfully insipid & seemingly powerless to make proactive decisions about the trajectory of her own life, as i have come to expect from the worst of chick lit, but she was patently unlikeable while she was wafting about being helpless obnoxious. i mean, at least the protag of the shopaholic books was kind of witty sometimes. this girl was a witless dullard, & i know it sucks when people don't like your books, but them's the breaks when you publish. attempting to brow-beat people into liking your stuff & sending emissaries to brag about awards you have won is unlikely to have much effect on people with a true understand of the quality expectations they bring to a book. writing a book is hard. writing a good book is even harder. this was not a good book.(less)

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Jun 16, 2008 Tali rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: contemporary

I guess Drake was making up her own genre—clown noir—or maybe I’m just not familiar with it. If she was, then she could look to Katherine Dunn as the foremother of the genre, but a mother whose teat she needs to keep suckling…as in, she’s not there yet.

It was neither subtle nor flagrantly funny. I felt like it needed to be one or the other, or a juggling act of both. I actually think it would be quite good as a movie. Then everything she tells us would be shown instead.

Basic synopsis: Clown Gir...more

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Nov 30, 2007 Lynn rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

Finishing this book was a real chore. I found Clown Girl to be amateurishly written with way too many run-on silly similes. The main character is never likable and I was never able to relate to her or understand why anyone would do anything she does. The far-fetched, melodramatic scenes never allowed me to get into the book at all. I could never suspend disbelief. Monica Drake is trying hard to be quirky, but the plot is essentially a conventional romantic comedy that flops on the comedy part: A...more

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Jul 19, 2008 jainabee rated it 2 of 5 stars

Recommended to jainabee by: Kate

What an interesting experience to read a book the whole way through and not once, ever, did I like —or even care about— the protagonist. I didn't care if she got a happy ending, and, frankly, would have preferred a catastophic demise. I kept feeling like the book would deliver a good sucker punch, but it just kept loitering in the zone between odd and annoying. I couldn't even properly hate it. And this is a book about a CLOWN.

Weird.

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Jul 31, 2011 Anita Dalton rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: books-we-own

Drake spins a marvelous tale but the real reason I think I loved this book so much is not only that Nita speaks to me in an almost eerie way, but also because Drake inverts the traditional chick-lit story by stating outright what it is that makes these clumsy, clueless, grandiose, insecure women appealing. She makes it clear from the very title what Nita is. She’s a clown. No mincing words. Nita is a clown and Drake shows how hard it is not to be a clown when hiding behind makeup, clothes, image...more

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Jun 24, 2007 Angella rated it 3 of 5 stars

I read this book because of Chuck Palahniuk’s recommendation. It was ok. In many places it could have been a lot stronger. The premise is far out and absurd, which can be really fun. A good example of this is Palahniuk or Douglas Coupland’s work. This book, I think, reached for that level of entertaining absurdity. However, the thing that makes the other authors work fun is that, even though it is ridiculous when you think about it, while you are reading it you are totally sold. It’s only when y...more

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Sep 03, 2008 Zack Rock rated it 2 of 5 stars

Monica Drake never seems to allow herself to revel in the stark absurdity of her character's situations, instead opting for a humanizing approach that harms both the absurdity and humanity of the novel. She also has difficulty transforming the physical pratfalls of clowning into humorous prose, describing Sniffles actions without embellishment under the assumption that we, like her, have a history of clowning to draw from when we read such passages. The clowning should have been the author's pri...more

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Jul 08, 2008 Bill rated it 4 of 5 stars

I was obviously drawn by the rubber chicken on the cover and, primarily, the introduction by Chuck Palahniuk. This is the story of Nita (aka Sniffles the Clown) who is trying her best to maintain on the income she receives from clowning, while also trying to pay clown college tuition for her boyfriend, Rex Galore, who has been missing in action for some time. Life in Baloneytown is sometimes hilarious, sometimes brutal, but always interesting. Through brushes with the law, trips to the emergency...more

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Feb 07, 2009 Angela rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Angela by: Powell's

Shelves: indiespensable

I'd seen and nearly bought Monica Drake's first novel a few times in bookstores before it arrived as a Powell's Indiespensable selection. The story is a lighthearted, absurd tale of Nita/Sniffles, a woman trying to make ends meet working as a clown while dealing with a dysfunctional long-distance relationship, a lecherous ex-boyfriend landlord and his vindictive girlfriend, an agent with none of her interests in mind, and a cop who conveniently reappears to save the day whenever Nita is picked u...more

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Oct 03, 2008 Rachell Taylor rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: own

When I first read that Chuck Palahniuk was referring this new author Monica Drake, I went straight to the bookstore and put her first novel Clown Girl, on order. I waited patiently for two months for the book to come in, and finally when I got it, the introduction made me more anxious than ever. But, as I started to read I found myself completely able to set it down. While in most places it is curiously written and I did slide over the pages with an amused smile, it wasn't a shocker, it wasn't h...more

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May 21, 2008 Fabio rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-black-list

This book was so disappointing.
Only a few ideas repeated over and over pointlessly: the clown ethics, how I miss my boyfriend, sickness. Once you get into the schema, you can tell 10 pages in advance what is going to happen - oh yes now she's going to get into troubles with that. It tries to be grotesque but there's not a good laugh in the whole book, nor a surprise, a strong emotion, or a tragedy. The fake ass and breasts can be funny at first, but after the image is repeated 30 times in the s...more

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Aug 20, 2008 Erik rated it 3 of 5 stars

I found myself thinking about Confederacy of Dunces about 1/4 of the way through this book. That's not a good thing, either; I hated Confederacy of Dunces. Although there are no overt parallels between Nita and Ignatius, both continued their string of self-defeating screw-ups long past the point of wearing thin. As far as I'm concerned, Nita and Ignatius will be forever labeled the most incredibly, mind-blowingly, tragically annoying characters in contemporary literature.

Yes, they're that bad.

In...more

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Mar 08, 2009 Donna rated it 3 of 5 stars

Recommended to Donna by: Shawn Sorensen

If you read this book at "face" value, it's a bizarre story of a girl/town that operates always dressed as clowns. If you read this book as a comment on how we live our lives constantly under disguise of who we really are and how being authentic can be scary, there's a lot to discuss!

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Aug 15, 2008 Treeee rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was oddly pleasurable. I picked it up and started reading and just couldn't stop until I was finished. The reason I say it was oddly pleasurable is because when I was describing it to a friend I found that it came out sounding completely boring. I will admit, the plot was not very strong, but Monica Drake's wonderful writing skills make up for that. Her character development is some of the best I have ever read, unfortunately there was more time spent on that than the plot. She also ha...more

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Aug 21, 2007 Zoe rated it 4 of 5 stars Recommends it for: artists, whores, everyone in between

Shelves: 2007books

Monica Drake worked on this book for a long, long time. Longer than most people ever work at anything. Her writing is careful, beautiful, strange, frantic, and wonderful. Clown Girl tells the story of Nita/Sniffles/Juicy Caboosey, a performance artist working as a clown who loses her boyfriend, her baby, her dog, her rubber chicken, her urine, and her mind (at times) while trying to stay true to herself and her art. Throw in a pot-growing ex-boyfriend/landlord, a friendly cop, an agent who wants...more

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Feb 11, 2008 Kirstin rated it 2 of 5 stars

Based upon Palahniuk's introduction, I expected over-the-top weird, perverted, edgy and funny. The only thing in Clown Girl that struck me as weird and edgy was that its main character is a young woman who's a clown, which is somewhat unique. The story was very predictable and actually a little sweet. Not what I was expecting at all.

If you're looking for something up to Palahniuk's standards, I wouldn't strongly suggest this book. However, if you just want a brainless read for a lazy weekend, I...more

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May 01, 2008 Mindy rated it 1 of 5 stars

Recommended to Mindy by: Vegan Don

Shelves: library-book, fiction

Monica Drake did write a book, get Chuck Palahniuk to write an introduction, and find a publisher. That's more than I’ve ever done. I’ll give her that. But she didn’t hold my attention, arouse my sympathies, or teach me anything. The characters were extremely flat despite their many layers of thick clown makeup and their occasional juggling-turned-arson mishaps. Drake tries desperately hard to be quirky and cool, but the book is rather boring and completely unsatisfying in terms of language, cha...more

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Oct 25, 2008 Sarah rated it 5 of 5 stars

Recommended to Sarah by: angrychicken.typepad.com

Shelves: fiction

I fear, after reading the other ho-hum reviews of this book, that perhaps teaching has destroyed my brain because I was completely charmed by Clown Girl. I found Nita reminiscent of Steve Urkel in her propensity for doing the exact wrong thing predictably in every situation the novel places her, but I was rooting for her the entire time. And let me say, for the first couple pages Rex Galore shows up, I was surprised by the story. Any story that can surprise me 7/8ths from the end I consider a wi...more

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Jan 29, 2013 Katherine rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2008

Sniffles (real name, Nita) is a clown that has fallen on hard times in Baloneytown. Her boyfriend, Rex Galore is off for an interview at Clown College, leaving her alone to find her way. While he is gone, she dreams of becoming a famous art performance clown, but is instead stuck working fairs tying balloon animals and biblical images, trying to make an honest dollar. She works constantly at an art piece she hopes to premiere someday: A silent version of ��The Metamorphosis��. Her world is div...more

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Jan 16, 2013 Mary Lou rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012

Clown Girl by Monica Drake is a delightful novel set in Portland about a woman who initially is striving, as a clown named Sniffles, to portray a choreographed adaptation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (A traveling salesman turns into a monstrous vermin, depriving his family of financial support. Coping with him and their situation strengthens them to the point where he dies and they are better off.)

Spoiler alert. Plot details below.

Sniffles is very appealing and the story includes references to loca...more

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Dec 30, 2011 Caitlin Constantine rated it 2 of 5 stars

I picked up this book with high expectations, considering that some writers I really admire and enjoy had good things to say about this book. Almost right away, I found myself irritated. I kept reading, though, because I wanted to believe that the brilliance and humor I'd heard about would appear, but it never did. At the end I found myself grasping for reasons to appreciate it, but I failed. Even the much-vaunted class/gender/social analysis did nothing for me. You mean to tell me that sometime...more

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Oct 23, 2011 Andy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So, I was looking at Chuck Palahnuik books, and this one came up (on my Kindle) and I read the description and just decided to dive in on it. I will say this, this was a weird, funny, exceptionally entertaining read, but it made me feel a little funny about the story and the characters because I wonder if people are really like this. I don't want to give too much away, but we're talking about people who are clowns, doing corporate gigs, and they border on prostitution (well, later in the book th...more

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Jan 03, 2011 Jennifer Graham rated it 5 of 5 stars

It's so hard to write a comedic novel--especially one that allows for genuine human absurdity rather than some forced ironic posturing. Clown Girl somehow finds the perfect center of black comedy: the space where the humour comes not from a diminishment or belittling of the protagonist's pain but a bottomless acceptance of it. Kafka, Chaplin, Emmet Kelly, and W.C. Fields are all invoked here, quite appropriately. Slapstick collides with existential conundra; our heroine's search for love, commun...more

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Jun 05, 2010 Abi Joya rated it 2 of 5 stars

Monica Drake’s Clown Girl is acclaimed as “…more than a great book...[it:] is its own reality.” (Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club) The book started off rather slow, abstract and obscure and stayed that way through most of the book. Clown Girl really is its own reality. The ending, however, makes up nearly the entire worth of the book. The theme of the book is illustrated very well by Eugene Ionesco: “No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from...more Monica Drake’s Clown Girl is acclaimed as “…more than a great book...[it:] is its own reality.” (Chuck Palahniuk, author of Fight Club) The book started off rather slow, abstract and obscure and stayed that way through most of the book. Clown Girl really is its own reality. The ending, however, makes up nearly the entire worth of the book. The theme of the book is illustrated very well by Eugene Ionesco: “No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.”
Throughout the novel, the main character, Nita (or Sniffles when in clown garb), finds herself in one bad situation after another. The beginning finds her missing her boyfriend (who is attending clown college out of state), recovering from a miscarriage (that she has yet to tell her boyfriend about) and fainting during a job because of heat exhaustion and a weak heart. She tells herself things will get better. But things don’t get better; they get worse. Nita lives with Herman and his girlfriend, whose name keeps changing. Herman is Nita’s ex-boyfriend and deals pot; his girlfriend is a classic picture of a strong woman in a circus and she doesn’t like Nita very much.
Nita “sells out” as an artist by taking corporate clown gigs, which she justifies by telling herself they pay more and she needs to save money to send to Rex (the boyfriend in Clown College). She tells herself the same thing when she and her two corporate clown partners pose in a risqué photo shoot to advertise themselves on a poster saying: “For a good time call: Trixie, Twinkles and Bubbles!” Even though it’s against her instincts and she doesn’t feel comfortable doing it, she keeps making excuses for it. Later in the story, she lets one of her clown partners, Crack, talk her into going on a “clown date” with a good paying guy. Nita never really believes that the paying guy will leave it at a date, but she goes anyways, telling herself she needs the money and this could be her big break. As one may guess, her “date” is expecting far more than she’s willing to give and in the process of getting away from him, she gets arrested for solicitation (prostitution). Nita almost burns down Herman’s house, trying to make up a new juggling routine. Her excuse? She needs a new act to earn more money. Throughout the entire story, Nita justifies the trouble she gets herself into with excuses of how she needs the money, how things will get better once Rex comes back, how all she needs is Rex.
Imagine her surprise then, when Rex comes back and is somewhat distant. When she first sees him after he gets back, she’s in a tavern, but just to use the bathroom and brush her teeth. Nita sleeps in Rex’s old ambulance as punishment for almost burning down Herman’s house; instead of staying with her, Rex sleeps in the house. It doesn’t make matters better when she tells him about the miscarriage, and his tone becomes slightly cooler towards her. When he comes to bail her out of jail, she realizes he’s stoned. When she confronts him on it, he starts saying that she’s changed way too much; he says in the two days that he’s seen her, she’s been at the tavern for breakfast and arrested for being a hooker. He wants her to help him develop one of her skit ideas so he can use it. When she says no, he shows her the poster advertisement for Trixie, Twinkles and Bubbles and says that she’s a drunk and a hooker and that the miscarriage was her fault. He breaks up with her. She realizes what the clown poster looks like and the kind of clientele it encourages. She suddenly sees how far she’s fallen. She’s at the lowest of the low.
Before Rex comes back, Nita is talking and spending time with a local police officer. He bails her out of several situations and tries to help her out along the way. The entire time Nita has known the police officer, Jerrod, he has tried to get her to show who she really is instead of Sniffles the clown. He mentions that he has never seen her without her clown make-up on and that he doesn’t even know her real name. She shows him her interpretation of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (which is the sketch Rex wants to steal for an audition), a skit where an office assistant is turned into a bug by society. He says it’s good, but asks her if she really thinks that its society that molds or makes a person into something.
When Nita and Rex break up, she’s heartbroken; she finds out that he was just using her. She sees that she was the one in the relationship who was in love, not Rex. How easy it was for him to walk away as soon as she stands up to him! She suddenly finds her loving Rex Galore to be a cold and accusing human being, once she stops obeying his every whim. She realizes then, that Jerrod has been right in saying that she can have different friends, that she isn’t stuck with these dysfunctional people who treat her badly.
On page 294 of a 297 page book, Nita accepts that she was the one who chose her friends, she was the one who decided to live with drugies and bullies and that she was the one who decided to wait in Baloneytown while Rex spent all her money. They were no one’s choices but her own. Sniffles gets up and dusts herself off, metaphorically speaking, and wipes off her make-up. She turns back into Nita, someone she says she hasn’t really been in years. She starts making choices that will take her away from the bug that she allowed society to turn her into; choices that will eventually allow her to be who she wants to be, who she is. Nita finally discovers that it is her condition that defines her, not the social condition.

This book was ok, although not one I would have chosen to read(it was for a class). Hopefully, the movie will be much better.
(less)

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Nov 30, 2009 Christy Ford rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: people who liked RENT, or who like reading about those worse off than them.

Recommended to Christy by: Jonathan

This didn't really do it for me.

To begin with, it was fairly predictable. With this genre, that's not necessarily a bad thing - basically you have the redemption ending and the die friendless in a gutter ending, pick one - it's how you get there that counts. Even internally, this didn't have many surprises though: It was pretty easy to guess what Rex was going to end up like even from the first mention. Again, that can work, sort of like watching a train wreck, but I don't think it helped in thi...more

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Oct 30, 2009 selena rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2009

Monica Drake is a woman after my own heart. It sounds bizarre but I love clown stories. She is also the second author recommended to me by Chuck Palahniuk – and this one panned out. The book is slightly like Suicide Blonde in that it takes place in a weird world. But in Monica Drake’s case, it feels intentional and appropriate. Her main character, Nita or Sniffles, is a clown living in Baloneytown. She aspires to do art with her clowning – Kafka inspired pieces grand-enough to get her into Clown...more

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Aug 05, 2009 Paul Kapellas rated it 1 of 5 stars

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Dec 25, 2008 Sue rated it 5 of 5 stars

This book, by a new novelist, sends the reader on a strange trip through Baloneytown, a section of an unamed city peopled by offbeat characters. The writing style is colorful, descriptive, action-based even when the protaganist is thinking about what she's going to do. Lots of angst, lots of symbolism, sorrow, laughter, you name it. Highly recommended, especially for people interested in writing and examining writing styles. Forward by Chuck Palahaniuk sets up the reader for a fun time.

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Apr 30, 2013 Sarah Metts rated it 2 of 5 stars

This is the review from my blog post found here: http://365windows.tumblr.com/post/492...

Nita — clown name: Sniffles — is dealing with some issues in her life. She’s pressured by fellow clowns to take on clown fetishes for high pay, lost her rubber chicken Plucky and future clown dog Chance (lost her Chance, get it?) and her heart seems to be on the fritz both physically and metaphorically. Landlord, also ex-boyfriend Herman, is shacking up with a muscle queen set on sending Nita packing from th...more

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“When life sucks, throw yourself into art.” — 4 people liked it

“I kneeled in front of the E M T chair, in front of the mirror on the medicine cabinet, and wiped the rest of the makeup away. My skin was raw, pink and new. The ambulance had a single round light in the middle of the ceiling. The light cast long shadows under my nose, ears, eyes, and chin, and in the shadows I was young and I was a crone, in the exact same moment. That's it, I thought: life is short. The only value of wated time is knowledge. p.295” — 3 people liked it

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