Bennett’s new book The Blonde of the Joke officially comes out today. It’s about sluttily-dressed teenage girls who shoplift from a mall in suburban Maryland, and if there is still some question in your mind about whether this or any book will be up your particular alley, I find that a handy trick is always to read until you get to the title character’s first line of dialogue. Which in this book is, “The first day of school and already they’re making me wear the whore’s raincoat! Can you believe it?”
Francie Knight is being made to wear a floor-length lime-green raincoat over her aqua tube top and gold lamé hot pants the same way that girls at Bennett’s and my high school were made to wear a blue raincoat when they violated dress code by wearing tank tops that revealed their bra straps, a rule I continue to flout to this day. There are also lots of things about this book that you’ll appreciate even if you didn’t go to Montgomery Blair High School. You can buy it from Amazon, or you can do what I just did and call up your local independent bookstore — mine are Word in Greenpoint and Bookcourt in Cobble Hill — and order it from them if they don’t have any in stock, and they’ll get it in faster than Amazon and you’ll get to feel righteous.
UPDATE: Bookcourt got it in before noon the next day.
Would stealing a copy be more in keeping with the spirit of the book?
You’d think! But actually no.
I went to a California high school, so obviously we did not have things like “whore’s raincoats” and “schoolmarms” (via Hex Education). And we also didn’t use words such as “lanyard” (p. 3) to describe that string-thing that somebody wears around their neck with a whistle or a key attached to it. We simply called it a string-thing that somebody wears around their neck with a whistle or a key attached to it. I guess this would go a long way in explaining why none of my high school friends or I have published books yet (and we are 5 years older than Emily and Bennett).
EEE! Excited.
NO LIE: I got my coarse, thick, jew mane braided so I could have hair like RayAnne.
Also, they made us wear our PE clothes if we violated dress code. The. Worst.
Emily: Have you given up on this blog?
@KM: Not at all. But I have been very busy trying to finish my book lately. Also I have been using my tumblr for some of the things that I formerly might have written a short post about here.
Will prolific, profound, or merely witty commenters on your blog get personally-inscribed copies of your book?
That’s a brilliant idea, Hal! We should also get one complimentary copy of Emily’s book for every nom de guerre we’ve used on here also.