Vendor
	Mohrbooks Literary Agency Annelie Geissler
Categories
Biography, Literature & Literary studies

TEENAGER

Bud Smith

Two teenagers, in love and insane, journey across the United States in this Bonnie and Clyde like adventure, pursuing a warped American dream, where Elvis is still king and the corndog the "backbone of this great country."

Kody Rawlee Green is stuck in juvie. Tella "Teal Cartwheels" Carticelli is packing her bags for Rome--on the orders of her parents who want her as far from Kody as possible. But teenage love is too strong a force for the obstacles of reality. And the highway beckons. Leaving their abusive pasts behind them in Jersey, Kody and Teal set off on a cross-country road trip equal parts self-destruction and self-discovery, making their way, one stolen car at a time, toward bigger, wider, bluer skies. Along the road, of course, there's time to stop at Graceland, classic diners, a fairgrounds that smells of "pony shit and kettle corn"; and time for run-ins with outsized personalities like the reincarnated Grand Canyon tour guide, Dead Bob, and the spurious Montana rancher, Bill Gold. On their heels, all the while, is Teal's brother, Neil Carticelli, who's abandoned his post in the Navy to rescue the sister he left behind. But does she really need saving? These all too American tropes find new expression in Bud Smith's own freewheeling prose - and in Rae Buleri's original illustrations - filling Teenager with humor, poetry, and a joy that's palpable in every unforgettable sentence. Bud Smith works heavy construction in Jersey City and has been published in The Paris Review. TEENAGER will be his trade debut.

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Book Published 2022-05-10 by Vintage

Comments

TEENAGER is one of Literary Hub's Most Anticipated of 2022: "Teenager is a lovestruck, cross-country road-trip novel following a couple of ill-starred delinquents on the run from the olds; and though we have plenty of novels that tell that story, this is the only one we have from Bud Smith. And that's good." Read more...

...a whirlwind journey through a mythic America... Smith has mixed violence with fable to create this modern-day tall tale about two teens who love each other and say to hell with everything else. Each small chapter is akin to a section from The Odyssey or Don Quixote, snapshots that could stand alone but merge together to create a greater story... A new American folktale with teeth.

...hard to put down thanks to Bonnie and Clydecaliber action and fascinating explorations of two deeply struggling young minds.

Teenager is a great artistic high-wire act and a gift to readers who still care about the timeless problem of young men and women finding their place together in this world - or not. To have captured this duality on paper demanded more than wildness, more than heart - all of which Smith has to burn - but also will and skill and ingenuity.

Smith's vibrant and violent debut novel...captures the pain, ebullience, and illusions of a troubled young man's adolescence.... Smith makes this a trip worth taking. Read more...

From the Graceland mansion to an alpaca farm in Montana, from a chapel in the Grand Canyon to the ancient forests of California, this is a love story as epic and eccentric as America. In prose that crackles and sings off the page, Bud Smith has written a humorous and tender new classic.

Scott Simon interviews writer and heavy construction worker Bud Smith about his new novel, "Teenager" Read more...

Just Make Someone Feel Something: The Millions Interviews Bud Smith and Rae Buleri Read more...

Abused when not neglected, and with no patience for self-pity, Teenager's Kody and Teal are the latest memorable additions to that venerable American tradition of They're young, they're in love, and they'll shoot if they have to, lighting out for the west and freedom, and Bud Smith is mostly pitch-perfect in his evocation of their wrecking ball reserves of striving, pain, resiliency, tenderness, and sociopathic violence. Wildly romantic, blithely clueless and always headlong, they're above all else passionately appreciative of the miracle of someone else having chosen, of all things, them, and everywhere they go they reveal, in all its doofy and intermittent heartlessness and lethality, the America that spawned them.