num_pages: 297
description: Clown Girl lives in Baloneytown, a seedy neighborhood where drugs, balloon animals, and even rubber chickens contribute to the local currency. Against a backdrop of petty crime, she struggles to live her dreams, calling on cultural masters Charlie Chaplin, Kafka, and da Vinci for inspiration. In an effort to support herself and her layabout performance-artist boyfriend, Clown Girl finds herself unwittingly transformed into a "corporate clown," trapping herself in a cycle of meaningless, high-paid gigs that veer dangerously close to prostitution. Monica Drake has created a novel that riffs on the high comedy of early film stars — most notably Chaplin and W. C. Fields — to raise questions of class, gender, economics, and prejudice. Resisting easy classification, this debut novel blends the bizarre, the humorous, and the gritty with stunning skill.
language: English
title: Clown Girl
titlecomplete: Clown Girl
genres: Dark, Thriller, Novels, Drama, Suspense, Adult, Mystery, Fiction, Contemporary, Humor
ratings_count: 5229
awards: awardedAt: 1167638400000
name: Oregon Book Award
category: the Novel (Finalist)
publisher: Hawthorne Books