Zoe Trope exists. She was born in 1986 and graduated from high school with the class of 2003 in Oregon.
Gr 10 Up-The 44-page nucleus of this book was originally published by a small press when the author was 14. Her precociously perceptive and preternaturally poisonous pen then drew the attention of HarperCollins, which offered her a six-figure book deal to keep the caustic coming-of-age diary ranting and raving through the increasingly irrelevant remainder of her high school career. Zoe's entries chronicle her tortured search for truth in love and art, her faltering faith in the value of activism in the face of universal apathy, and her bottomless disdain for just about every figure and fixture in her high school life. The language is undeniably raw-a hip mixture of bald statement, cyberesque shorthand, and stream-of-consciousness prose. Her frank accounts of her transgender search for the perfect kiss and her first girlfriend who becomes her first boyfriend will surely shock certain audiences. Still, like Stephen Chbosky's The Perks of Being a Wallflower (MTV, 1999), this is an important offering for exceptional, alienated readers-the talented and the tortured misfits who need to know that they are not alone. The fact that a dorky teen can actually pursue personal success completely on her own terms; make lots of people read, wince, laugh, and think; and score a major wad of cash in the bargain will actually give them something to cheer about.-Jeffrey Hastings, Highlander Way Middle School, Howell, MI Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
In Trope's memoir of her sophomore year, the teenage author struggles with society and her own identity, falls in love with a girl who becomes a boy and, in a postmodern moment, describes publishing this memoir. The paper-over-board book reads like a diary, with plenty of explicit language and sex talk; characters are given cryptic names ("Linux Shoe" is her gay best friend; "Scully/Skull" is her "first girlfriend turned first boifriend") and some of the writing is cryptic too. Trope juxtaposes sophisticated references and ideas next to talk of band practice and earth club, reflecting her complicated emerging identity as a bright, talented and driven teen who doesn't fit into society's mold. The entries progress in seductively brief, self-contained bites (more like fits and starts than a traditional chronological memoir) and readers will find many moments to which they can easily relate ("Forced out of slumber to argue with my hair. I claim defeat"). At times, Trope's rants can be pretentious or obvious ("I wonder when I will be content with everything and nothing that I have"), but the author's willingness to make herself vulnerable, especially in her writing about Scully's gender transformation, makes for an impressive read ("My heart knows that my boyfriend is truly genderless, a creature beyond definition, a walking heart with limbs and lips"). Ages 14-up. (Oct.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
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