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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 cliqueβthe jocks who pummel them, the girls who ignore or taunt themβas well as the dogged and disconcerting attentions of a sixth-grader whoβs even more ferociously disaffected than they are. And while Edwinβs 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 boysβ central predicament is not their hatred of the world but their agonized and enduring love of it. Never before has Jim Shepardβs compassionate virtuosity been on such conspicuous, unsettling, and haunting display.
 Media BuzzAll Things Considered - September 23, 2008
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