Sunday, January 22, 2012

When A Book Takes Over A Life, Hilarity Ensues


After a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs reads Robert Louis Stevenson's novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. Convinced that Stevenson's book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its core values: boldness, resolution, independence, and horn-blowing.

Treasure Island!!! is the first title in the new Tonga Books imprint, headed by Alice Sebold, author of  The Lovely Bones, and published by Europa Editions.

Jackie says:
"This is about an obsession with a book that goes wayyyyyyy to far.  The 'heroine' of the book (who never gives us her name), a 25 year old just drifting about without any sort of ambition but a history of crappy jobs, gets goaded into reading Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island.  She gets swept up in the sense of adventure and decides to live her own life based on what she deems are the 'Core Values' of the book:  Boldness, Resolution, Independence and Horn-Blowing.  And so her own adventure begins--with some hilarious results and no few character quirks that left me alternately wanting to straggle her, laughing out loud or cringing--sometimes all at the same time.  This is another interesting debut novel by an award winning essayist and well worth the time to read in the name of good fun."

1 comment:

Kelly Robinson said...

I'm pretty sure it's meant ironically, but the multiple exclamation marks really irk me.