(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...

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 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...

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...

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.

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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!

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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...