A review by thekatisalie
Clown Girl by Monica Drake
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.