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Also by Jim Shepard:

The Queen of Bad Influences, September 2026
Hardcover / e-Book / audiobook
Phase Six, June 2022
Trade Paperback / e-Book
Phase Six, May 2021
Hardcover / e-Book
Invaders, July 2016
Paperback / e-Book
You Think That's Bad, April 2011
Hardcover
Project X: A Novel, April 2005
Paperback

PROJECT X: A NOVEL
By: Jim Shepard

Vintage
April 2005
On Sale: April 12, 2005
176 pages
ISBN: 1400033489
EAN: 9781400033485
Paperback
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Fiction

Below the sign welcoming the new eighth-grade class to school is one that promises to leave no child unsuccessful and a handout that offers eight ways of being smart. For Edwin Hanratty, at times as hilarious as he is miserable, this is part of what makes junior high pretty much a relentless nightmare. And so, with Flake, his only friend, he contends with clique upon clique—the jocks who pummel them, the girls who ignore or taunt them—as well as the dogged and disconcerting attentions of a sixth-grader who’s even more ferociously disaffected than they are. And while Edwin’s parents work hard to understand him, they face without fully realizing it a demoralization so systemic that he and Flake have no recourse other than their own bitter and smart remarks, until they gradually begin flirting with the most horrible revenge of all.

This lethal impulse, which has touched communities across America, has never been given such shocking credibility as it has in Project X, which suggests that these boys’ central predicament is not their hatred of the world but their agonized and enduring love of it. Never before has Jim Shepard’s compassionate virtuosity been on such conspicuous, unsettling, and haunting display.

Media Buzz

All Things Considered - September 23, 2008