22 January 2021
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing
Growing up is always hard, but especially when so many think you're a washed-up has-been at twenty-two.
Jena Chung plays the violin. She was once a child prodigy and is now addicted to sex. She's struggling a little. Her professional life comprises rehearsals, concerts, auditions and relentless practice; her personal life is spent managing family demands, those of her creative friends, and lots of sex. Jena is selfish, impulsive and often behaves badly, though mostly only to her own detriment. And then she meets Mark - much older and worldly-wise - who bewitches her. Could this be love?
When Jena wins an internship with the New York Philharmonic, she thinks the life she has dreamed of is about to begin. But when Trump is elected, New York changes irrevocably and Jena along with it. Is the dream over? With echoes of Frances Ha, Jena's favourite film, truths are gradually revealed to her. Jena comes to learn that there are many different ways to live and love and that no one has the how-to guide for any of it - not even her indomitable mother.
A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing unflinchingly explores the confusion of having expectations upturned, and the awkwardness and pain of being human in our increasingly dislocated world - and how, in spite of all this, we still try to become the person we want to be. It is a dazzling, original and astounding debut from a young writer with a fierce, intelligent and fearless new voice.
| Title | : | A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing |
| Edition Language | : | English |
| ISBN | : | 9781760877194 |
| Format Type | : |
Readers Also Enjoyed A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing
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I am conflicted.Essentially, this is a novel about emptiness. Jena is a professional violinist with a gaping hole of loneliness inside her which she fills with meaningless sex. That's pretty much the ...
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I adored this, my goodness. It is so wonderful to see stories about messy, disobedient Asian women!This novel made me incredibly uncomfortable to read in all the best ways. I saw myself in so much of ...
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I was fortunate to receive a copy of this book from Allen & Unwin to review and for that I am giving an honest opinion.One star for a plot with a lot of potential but this was not a book for me nor an...
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Winter days spent reading books on the beach wearing a tshirt. Like in Queenie and Normal People, the protagonist of A Lonely Girl is a Dangerous Thing allows herself to be debased sexually to an incr...
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2.5 - I struggled to connect with this one. The protagonist is intentionally difficult, but I never really found a way in. ...
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This is a narrative following a 23-year old classical violinist, a former child-prodigy reckoning with the start of her professional career as an adult. Jena had a breakdown as a 14-year old, from whi...
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There is nothing of literary grace in a novel with no character development, a selfish and narrow minded protagonist who frequently victimises herself, and blunt and crude language and sentence struct...
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Child prodigies are cute, but have you ever wondered what happens to them when they grow up? Jena’s career as a violinist came to a screeching halt as a teenager, after a public humiliation that “...
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This debut novel has been quite divisive amongst its readership. On the surface, it’s easy to see why. The narrator is an early-twenties TAG (Thin Asian Girl), once a world-famous child violinist an...
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Trigger warnings: violent depictions of sex, fatphobia, daddy issues, pornography, self-harming behaviourSo, the first 2 pages of this book features the c word as well as a very detailed oral sex scen...