Description
Book SynopsisIn an unnamed town in the summer of 1998, Judy is an isolated and inexperienced teenager on the cusp of adulthood struggling to craft an identity for herself— especially as the artist she wants to be. There is little help around her. Her only friends are increasingly obsessed with a cultish belief in a coming “ Big Shadow.” Her mother is afraid of life and finds solace in TV shows. Then Judy meets Maurice Blunt, a visiting summer poetry class professor who is a “ has-been” fixture of the 1970s NYC punk music scene. Judy believes Maurice— a man more than twice her age desperately seeking lost adoration— is the ticket out of her current life. Soon, she begins taking secret weekend trips to visit him.Judy’ s visits to New York bring hopes of belonging to the city’ s cultural world and making a living as a video artist. With each trip and frustrated promise, however, she comes to realize that there is a price to pay for her golden ticket entry into this insular and moribund scene. A delicious novel of psychological nuance and dark humour, Big Shadow explores the costs of self-deceit, fandom, and tenuous ambitions, exposing the lies we’ ll tell ourselves to edge closer to what we want.
Table of ContentsTo come
