Product Description

Living in a Newcastle suburb on a steady diet of Bailey's and chips, Rowena Vincent fantasizes about her absent father and the elimination of her mother's new boyfriend. When it becomes obvious she is losing her grip on reality, she is packed off to a teenage therapy group. Meet the Madolescents.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #608379 in Books
• Published on: 2002-03-07
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The heroine of Chrissie Glazebrook's debut novel, The Madolescents, is a 16-year-old misfit called Rowena, living with her mum and her mum's mega-gross lover Filthy Luker in poorish urban northern England. It is, in Rowena's inimitable voice (effortlessly and splendidly captured by Glazebrook), a situation fit to send anyone "friggin mentally ill", and it duly tips the already nervy, highly-strung adolescent into a genuine bid for lunacy. As a consequence she is then stabled among a bunch of other maladjusted youngsters for the purposes of group therapy--the Madolescents of the title.

What happens to and between the Madolescents is the ostensible subject of this book, and Glazebrook sketches their doings neatly. But it's really the cynical, robust, fragile, sassy character of Rowena herself that shines through and makes the novel work. For in all her tacky teen heroism and self-loathing loveliness she is nothing less than a Catcher in the Rye in black nail varnish and flip flops.

"The spot on my chin's grown into a huge bubo because I tried to squeeze it before it had a proper head!".
"I AM ROWENA. WARRIOR PRINCESS. I am invincible. I think my period's started".
"I heard this squelchy noise coming from Mum's bedroom, it sounded like baby Maggie from The Simpsons sucking her dummy. It was them--doing it!".

These three quotes from a possible infinitude give a good idea of what this novel's like: funny, acerbic, vulgar, smart, likeable, earthy and winningly demotic. --Sean Thomas

From the Publisher
Madness, morticians and a large portion of chips.

About the Author
Chrissie Glazebrook has worked in a zoo, a vegetarian restaurant, and as a radio and television presenter. She was a feature writer for the late Jackie magazine and has been published in a range of magazines and newspapers, including a stint as Jenny Talia, a spoof agony aunt. She ran away at seventeen to live in a Beatnik colony in St Ives, Cornwall, returning to her Black Country home after being busted for drugs.She now lives in Newcastle upon Tyne and works as Literature Officer at Northern Arts. She recently gained an MA in Creative Writing and won the Waterstone’s Prize for Prose. The Madolescents is her first novel.

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Customer Reviews

Brilliant and entertaining.
This is a wonderful comic novel, brilliantly written and laugh-out-loud funny in places. I recommend it wholeheartedly, even though it's not the sort of thing I'd usually read.

The narrator is a sixteen-year old girl, and though I am sure that young people would love the book, it is an adult book, don't worry about that. There is stuff in it about funeral parlours, drug-taking, transvestism, mental illness, shoplifting and vandalism, so it's hardly mainstream. Perhaps that's why a couple of reviewers here didn't like it. But if Glazebrook wanted to write a best seller, she could do so tomorrow, in my opinion, because the story has pace and vivid characters and leaps off the page. Only a gifted writer can make a book do that.

I suppose that the Madolescents is in the tradition of the working-class, slangy, dialect novel, but it's far the best of that genre that I have read. There are more Geordie slang words per page than you'd hear up Bigg Market, but they didn't hold me up (and I am from Cornwall). And bouncing around among the slang are metaphors and similes to die for. Boy, can this author write visually - it's a rare gift:

"[He] makes a steeple with his hands. They're white and wrinkly, like tripe."

"Ash unbuttons his shirt and slips it off, revealing a goldy brown body, totally smooth and hairless, with copper-coloured nipples like rivets on 501s."

and aurally:

"Filthy's snoring like an elephant with catarrh."

It's a joy to find a writer who can knock off lines like that. And she does it on every page.

What's really wonderful and surprising is that the Madolescents, unlike most "working-class" novels, is never depressing (not to me, anyway), despite the in-your-face subject matter. In that respect Glazebrook reminds me of Steven Berkoff - the grosser Berkoff gets, the funnier he is: same with Glazebrook.

This is an absolute gem, this book. Don't hesitate.

why not laugh out loud at the horrors of a troubled puberty?
It's the voice and sardonic first-person observations that give this anarchic black comedy it's irresistible ticklish quality - while quite dreadful things are happening. Laugh out loud novels of this quality are far too few and far between..Meanwhile, us in the regions, provinces and other countries are looking forward to reading the sequel and seeing the film.

Earthy, darkly comic. cleverly written,
This is a rare novel which which has appeals for older people and teenagers. The anarchy, the insight into chaotic lives, the sharp writing, the flowing pace make the novel accessible without being trite. In 'Rowena', Glazebook has invented a very special character who has wings and should live beyond this novel. I lent my copy to two fifteen yearolds who consumed it almost in one gulp and asked where was the next one? On a serious note, without 'writing down' or being unneccessarily sociological, this novel validates lives which normally go unrecorded. Perhaps most important, it made me laugh out loud. The film should be a treat.