Karam's review
Rose of No Man's Land by Michelle Tea
Funny and profane account of teenage Trish's first few days of summer, starting when she misses the last day of ninth grade because her family doesn't care enough to wake her when her alarm clock shorts out. With a couch-ridden mother who diagnoses herself with every disease discussed on TV, an aggressively optimistic sister angling to get on MTV's Real World, and a long-departed dad who is probably getting high in the Louisiana swamps, Trish seems headed for a summer of loneliness and closet alcoholism. At her sister's insistence, however, Trish gets a retail job at the local mall's most popular teeny-bopper clothing store, a move that ultimately ends in humiliating disaster, but positions her to become friends with Rose, a scrawny fry cook with no apparent fear or inhibitions. On their first night hanging out, Rose and Trish have the kind of adventures that are most parents' worst nightmares, but which offer Trish a glimpse of the joys and terrors that life has to offer.
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