zoe_schlosser's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
4.25
thekatisalie's review against another edition
4.0
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 divided into very set social scenes: The clowns, the cops, the rich folk who rent the clowns, and the rest of the trailer trash.
While performing one afternoon, Nita has a miscarriage. Without insurance, she is back on the street quickly until she suffers a panic attack and lands herself back in the hospital at the hand of Jerrod, a too kind cop. The doctors tell her she has a heart condition, and send her home to do a 24 hour urine collection to see if they can find anything out. On the way home, she sees Jerrod and because he is a cop, she runs. Cops always mean trouble for clowns.
When it is found out the Nita and Jerrod have been spending time together, Nita is thrown out of her home. Her landlord forbids any cop to be seen around their home, and rightly so ��� he���s a drug dealer and a burnout. Jerrod shows up in her life more and more, always there to bail her out when things get hard. Nita begins to wonder why he is being so kind to her, and whether or not he���s just another guy looking for a clown date.
In this strange world filled with coulrophobics and coulrophiles, Nita is stuck trying to find her way as a performer. Should she sink to the bottom and become an S& M clown? Should she stick to her path and create her own one-of-a-kind act? The lines between clowning and prostitution get more blurred, day after day as she waits for Rex���s return.
Nita pines for Rex to come home, over glorifying their love and their relationship until one afternoon, he just appears. Confused over her relationship with Jerrod, Nita quickly tries to solve her problems by throwing all of herself back to Rex. She is met at first with love and passion, but Rex quickly tells Nita that he has this wonderful idea for his audition at Clown College: A silent version of ���The Metamorphosis���. Betrayed and baffled, Nita���s world which seemed to be falling into place becomes a mess one more time. Once more, she must start over and reevaluate her clowning life.
Opinion: Monica Drake took her time with this novel, it being her first, and it shows. The connections between characters as only slightly predictable, but are always well explained. She shows an interesting reflection of how we can take all of these cultures and sub cultures and blur the lines to make them what we want. The clowns are outcasts that the rich need for entertainment. The rich use them for everything, yet still fear them and their kind.
Near the end, Nita removes her clown make up, and hardly even recognizes who she has become. There is constant talk between Jerrod and Nita about how they are in costume (her, a clown, him, a cop) all the time, putting on an act that is more important than any act they know. Everything they have is a prop, there to illicit a response, to secure their future (him, a gun, her, a rubber chicken). Who are the underneath the image they display?
Drake has a very honest voicing through her novel, making her main character very believable. You feel for Sniffles, and want the best for her. You cringe when things go wrong for her and you root for her when things start going right. Jerrod comes across as a bashful, yet down-to-earth type. Every time he is brought back to Sniffles, I was excited to see what would happen. The glorification of Rex Galore really showed how easy it is to get lost within your love for someone and how human it is to feel entirely devoted to something you���ve really only idealized. The heartbreak and betrayal are real and the feeling this book evokes make it worth adding to your library.
Rating: On a scale of 1-5 stars, this book is a 4.5. It took me awhile to get passed the veil of Baloneytown and realize that this book is set in modern times, but in a world full of literary metaphor. Once I got into the sync of things and accepted a little suspense of disbelief, this book really got enjoyable. I loved the format of it: titled chapters. It made each section feel like its own episode in Nita���s topsy-turvy life. Drake did a great job really making her unbelievable world believable, which made me take yet another fun look at the world we live in. It���s easy to see how Chuck Palahniuk and she are such good friends.
While performing one afternoon, Nita has a miscarriage. Without insurance, she is back on the street quickly until she suffers a panic attack and lands herself back in the hospital at the hand of Jerrod, a too kind cop. The doctors tell her she has a heart condition, and send her home to do a 24 hour urine collection to see if they can find anything out. On the way home, she sees Jerrod and because he is a cop, she runs. Cops always mean trouble for clowns.
When it is found out the Nita and Jerrod have been spending time together, Nita is thrown out of her home. Her landlord forbids any cop to be seen around their home, and rightly so ��� he���s a drug dealer and a burnout. Jerrod shows up in her life more and more, always there to bail her out when things get hard. Nita begins to wonder why he is being so kind to her, and whether or not he���s just another guy looking for a clown date.
In this strange world filled with coulrophobics and coulrophiles, Nita is stuck trying to find her way as a performer. Should she sink to the bottom and become an S& M clown? Should she stick to her path and create her own one-of-a-kind act? The lines between clowning and prostitution get more blurred, day after day as she waits for Rex���s return.
Nita pines for Rex to come home, over glorifying their love and their relationship until one afternoon, he just appears. Confused over her relationship with Jerrod, Nita quickly tries to solve her problems by throwing all of herself back to Rex. She is met at first with love and passion, but Rex quickly tells Nita that he has this wonderful idea for his audition at Clown College: A silent version of ���The Metamorphosis���. Betrayed and baffled, Nita���s world which seemed to be falling into place becomes a mess one more time. Once more, she must start over and reevaluate her clowning life.
Opinion: Monica Drake took her time with this novel, it being her first, and it shows. The connections between characters as only slightly predictable, but are always well explained. She shows an interesting reflection of how we can take all of these cultures and sub cultures and blur the lines to make them what we want. The clowns are outcasts that the rich need for entertainment. The rich use them for everything, yet still fear them and their kind.
Near the end, Nita removes her clown make up, and hardly even recognizes who she has become. There is constant talk between Jerrod and Nita about how they are in costume (her, a clown, him, a cop) all the time, putting on an act that is more important than any act they know. Everything they have is a prop, there to illicit a response, to secure their future (him, a gun, her, a rubber chicken). Who are the underneath the image they display?
Drake has a very honest voicing through her novel, making her main character very believable. You feel for Sniffles, and want the best for her. You cringe when things go wrong for her and you root for her when things start going right. Jerrod comes across as a bashful, yet down-to-earth type. Every time he is brought back to Sniffles, I was excited to see what would happen. The glorification of Rex Galore really showed how easy it is to get lost within your love for someone and how human it is to feel entirely devoted to something you���ve really only idealized. The heartbreak and betrayal are real and the feeling this book evokes make it worth adding to your library.
Rating: On a scale of 1-5 stars, this book is a 4.5. It took me awhile to get passed the veil of Baloneytown and realize that this book is set in modern times, but in a world full of literary metaphor. Once I got into the sync of things and accepted a little suspense of disbelief, this book really got enjoyable. I loved the format of it: titled chapters. It made each section feel like its own episode in Nita���s topsy-turvy life. Drake did a great job really making her unbelievable world believable, which made me take yet another fun look at the world we live in. It���s easy to see how Chuck Palahniuk and she are such good friends.
lindacbugg's review against another edition
I really wanted to like this book and gave it far longer than most before I gave up. When I heard it was going to be a movie I thought I'd better read it 1st before they ruined it but I so didn't care about anyone in this book.
buscemisgrl's review against another edition
1.0
Absolutely devastated that a campy book about a clown girl turned out to be pro cop propaganda?????
minvanwin's review against another edition
1.0
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, character, setting, or plot.
jessica_h's review against another edition
Abandoned this about half way though. Such surrealism in novels just doesn't seem to work for me. I had no incentive to finish this to find out what happens, as I wasn't really sure what was happening as I was reading it. Such an intriguing premise, and I was enjoying it initially, but the weirdness just started to drain my attention. It was all a bit much, and none of it was written in a way that I thought was particularly special. Still really interested in picking up this authors short story collection. Didn't see much point in continuing with this wacky novel though. Not a bad book, just not doing much for me right now.
audaciaray's review against another edition
1.0
I am drawn to books about people living on the fringes of culture but the protagonist of this book is a twenty something down on her luck white girl living in (aka gentrifying) a "bad" (aka full of poor people of color) neighborhood and being a clown. There's a lot of hand wringing over whether she will or will not do one or both of two terrible things: date a cop she's flirting with (ohgodnoooo) and do clown fetish related sex work (obvs not an exciting moral dilemma to this reader). The writing is fun and lively enough that I was considering reading through to the end but I am full of too much loathing for this character so NOPE.
melliedm's review against another edition
4.0
Sniffles, AKA Nita, brings absurdity to the darkest places. Miscarriage, sexual assault, animal abuse, emotional abuse, misogyny, medical gaslighting: all of this darkness (which remains just as dark and troubling as it sounds) lives in the same world as Drake's clowning. Set in the fictional land of metaphor and satire known as Baloneytown, Nita is the titular clown girl. We're introduced to her performing balloon art on the street post-miscarriage, where she has a cardiac episode, and things snowball from there. From her interactions with lustful colourophiles, her fellow female clowns, the other impoverished folk of Baloneytown, a cop who becomes a recurring character, and Rex Galore--the "away trying to get into clown college" boyfriend and love of Nita's life; to her pursuing of art in the face of financial need in the face of the misogyny inherent to clowning; and wow so much more; the book is relatively short but packs a real punch.
Clown Girl goes from dark to absurd without a moment's notice, but for my taste it doesn't feel like it's ever taking the piss out of any of it's topics. Maybe that's because we read the story from Nita's perspective, and it's easy to read between the lines of dread as something not far from self-deprecation, a kind of self-defense mechanism I find myself familiar with. We aren't reading it as a distant observer, but rather as Nita trying to comfort herself with things that are making her feel truly horrible: and of course she does so with goofy, often sardonic humor. And sometimes she even gets on her own case about it.
Towards the end of the book I found myself getting worked up along with Nita, and was certain I would rate this book 5*. However, the ending was a true disappointment. Without spoiling anything, I felt certain that Nita had achieved a certain kind of character development, which was instead compromised in the last page and a half. It was not a terrible ending, but it wasn't as effective. 4*.
Clown Girl goes from dark to absurd without a moment's notice, but for my taste it doesn't feel like it's ever taking the piss out of any of it's topics. Maybe that's because we read the story from Nita's perspective, and it's easy to read between the lines of dread as something not far from self-deprecation, a kind of self-defense mechanism I find myself familiar with. We aren't reading it as a distant observer, but rather as Nita trying to comfort herself with things that are making her feel truly horrible: and of course she does so with goofy, often sardonic humor. And sometimes she even gets on her own case about it.
Towards the end of the book I found myself getting worked up along with Nita, and was certain I would rate this book 5*. However, the ending was a true disappointment. Without spoiling anything, I felt certain that Nita had achieved a certain kind of character development, which was instead compromised in the last page and a half. It was not a terrible ending, but it wasn't as effective. 4*.
saffronso's review against another edition
4.0
I really enjoyed this book. The introduction by Chuck Palahniuk was lovely, and I saw similarities between their styles. I really enjoyed the unique perspective and quirky ideas scattered throughout. It had a bit less of the weird 'flair'/repetition that Palahniuk has mastered. Nita/Sniffles is misunderstood and seems to find herself in continually worsening situations. While her train of logic may not be ideal, but I enjoy her continual struggle to remain dignified in a profession that is generally not considered very classy. I really liked the ending. I expected that she was glorifying Rex, and it was great to see her be able to break out of her rut of an obsession with him and move on.
briwhatyareading's review against another edition
3.0
I've owned this book for two years and only now have just read it. I was intially drawn by the introduction by Chuck Palahniuk, if I remember correctly, because I love him and I figured he would endorse an author who can come up with some really twisted, delightfully perverse stuff. And then there were the obvious draws: The promise of a f-ed up clown world (YEAH!)?! A commentary on gender, class, prejudice, etc (Right up my alley!)?! And a FEMALE author?! Sign me up!!
Well, this book did not meet my expectations...but I still enjoyed it. Was it as twisted as I had hoped? No. Could certain aspects have been taken farther? Yes. Did I, like other reviewers, find the main character obnoxious and unlikable? Absolutely not. In fact, I think I could safely say that I might have really, really liked this book had I read it when I initially purchased it two years back. And as it stands now, I still did enjoy it--the world of Baloneytown was intriguing, Nita/Sniffles/Juicy Caboosey has a nice character arc, and there is enough absurdity to keep me interested (although at times it feels belabored...while at other times it seems like not quite enough). I have to say, I laughed out loud when Sniffles is being admitted to the psych ward and her keepers think she is brandishing her burned-up (fake) boobs as a weapon. I think some of the metaphores were a little cliched (hiding behind make-up, costumes/uniforms), and Jerrod seemed a little to self-aware for my taste. But to me, the good outweighs the not-so-good in this novel.
Well, this book did not meet my expectations...but I still enjoyed it. Was it as twisted as I had hoped? No. Could certain aspects have been taken farther? Yes. Did I, like other reviewers, find the main character obnoxious and unlikable? Absolutely not. In fact, I think I could safely say that I might have really, really liked this book had I read it when I initially purchased it two years back. And as it stands now, I still did enjoy it--the world of Baloneytown was intriguing, Nita/Sniffles/Juicy Caboosey has a nice character arc, and there is enough absurdity to keep me interested (although at times it feels belabored...while at other times it seems like not quite enough). I have to say, I laughed out loud when Sniffles is being admitted to the psych ward and her keepers think she is brandishing her burned-up (fake) boobs as a weapon. I think some of the metaphores were a little cliched (hiding behind make-up, costumes/uniforms), and Jerrod seemed a little to self-aware for my taste. But to me, the good outweighs the not-so-good in this novel.