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SCREW LOOSE by Chris Wheat

SCREW LOOSE

by Chris Wheat

Pub Date: Oct. 15th, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-74175-495-7
Publisher: Allen & Unwin

A madcap comedy featuring a huge cast of characters, this Australian import may find fans among readers with a taste for the unusual, but the light-as-air tone makes it difficult to connect with the story. A star football player in love with an obsessively clean Muslim girl, the lesbian daughter of a Maharaja, a prima donna who keeps a fleet of Barbie dolls as her counsel and a girl raised by dingoes are just a few of the personalities populating this frenetic tale of high school in Melbourne. Conniving Chelsea propels the story forward, offering to organize not only etiquette classes and a rowing team at her new school but a formal dance, at which it is immediately obvious there will be some kind of climactic tomfoolery. Love, lust and family strife provide much of the humor—and there are some genuinely funny moments. However, the over-the-top zany details and quick treatment of each protagonist quickly become exhausting and may result in readers feeling as if this one ultimately slips through their fingers. (Fiction. 13 & up)