The Wonder Bread Summer

April 8, 2013
Allie’s obedient nature served her well through a turbulent childhood, but also led to trouble: her unsavory ex-boyfriend made off with her Berkeley scholarship money and she’s about to be dropped from enrollment and evicted from her apartment. Her sleazy boss, Jonas, hasn’t paid her in two months for her work at his dress shop, and when she discovers he’s dealing cocaine out of the back of the shop, she gets an idea. No sooner does the book begin than Allie is on the run with a Wonder Bread bag full of stolen coke and a very angry Jonas on her heels. Trying to stay one step ahead of him and his heavy, Vice Versa, Allie goes to Los Angeles and gets help from an unlikely assortment of people new and old—including a quadriplegic pornographer; ’80s rocker Billy Idol; and Allie’s erstwhile father. In trying to untangle the mess she’s in, Allie might finally learn how to stand up for herself. Blau’s (Drinking Closer to Home) madcap chase through 1980s L.A. is over-the-top, and Allie’s trajectory is predictable, but the journey is too much fun to dwell on contrived plot points. A liberal dose of dark humor and an oddly heart-warming ending add to the twisted ride. Agent: Gail Hochman, Brandt & Hochman Literary Agents Inc.

April 1, 2013
1983 is like, a bummer, man, in this hazy quasi-comedy about sex, blow and what's next. No stranger to the unique strain of adolescent nostalgia for California after her similarly themed debut, The Summer of Naked Swim Parties, Blau (Drinking Closer to Home, 2011, etc.) goes over the top, sometimes very uncomfortably, with this druggie blast from the past. Set in the Los Angeles glory days of hair, metal and valley porn, the author designs quite the odd duck to center her gray comedy. When we open on shiftless Berkeley college student/remind-us-yet-one-more-time-she's-Jewish-biracial-Asian--wait, she has a name, it's Allie Dodgson. Anyway, the girl is not doing so hot. She loaned a bunch of money to her dreamy boyfriend, who promptly broke up with her. To make ends meet, Allie is working in a crappy dress shop in Oakland with her BFF Beth, snorting coke and trying to avoid the antagonistic penis of her masturbatory employer Jonas. Unfortunately for her, tuition and the rent are both due, and Jonas isn't giving up her paycheck without a fight. In a fit of pique, Allie swoops up a Wonder Bread bag full of high-octane cocaine, and she's off on her After Hours-esque misadventure. There are a lot of bad decisions, a lot of poorly made decisions and a lot of kooky characters to keep Allie rolling and tumbling. "I want to go back to school next summer," Allie says. "I want to stay in Berkeley and graduate with honors. I want to return this car to my friend Beth. I don't want to be a coke-snorting thief." There's a bit of lost-girl syndrome as Allie tries to reconnect with her rock-star mother and her absentee father. But tastes will vary--between the paraplegic porn producer and Allie shagging Billy Idol (seriously), most readers will have made up their minds one way or another. Meant to be Alice in Wonderland by way of Boogie Nights, the book comes off more like vintage Tarantino performed by HBO's Girls.

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May 1, 2013
All 20-year-old Allie Dodgson wants is her paycheck, so she can cover rent and college tuition at Berkeley. But her lecherous, cocaine-dealing boss won't settle up with her unless she takes her clothes off. Instead, Allie steals a Wonder Bread bag stuffed with blow from the back office and heads for Los Angeles, where she hopes her parents will be able to provide her with some advice. The only problem is, she doesn't know where to find either of them. During her search for her family she meets a paraplegic porn producer, a legendary rock 'n' roll star, and the best tamale chef this side of the Rio Grande. Like Lewis Carroll's Alice, upon whom she is based, Allie is disturbed but undistracted as the world around her grows curiouser and curiouser, and she never forgets her overall goal of finding her way home. Blau weaves a tale that is raunchy, poignant, and triumphant in turnand sometimes manages to be all three at the same time.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)