Big nobody A novel

A 40-something woman looks back on her awkward teen years in 1970s London in this bold, hilarious, and surprisingly moving debut. Kadis, a music industry veteran, peppers the narrative with references to the era's glam stars David Bowie and Marc Bolan, who capture the imagination of narrator Constance Costa and offer solace after she loses her British mother and brothers in a car accident. Constance blames her emotionally and physically abusive Greek father, whom she calls "The Fat Murderer," for the deaths, and reels from his "jealousy and psychotic need for control." While fearing she might be her school's "freak," she plots ways to kill her father, and takes in conflicting advice from the imaginary voices of Bowie and Bolan. "If I had cared about what other people thought, I'd never have made 'The Laughing Gnome,' " Bowie confides, while Bolan presses her to go to the school disco ("you gotta funk or be square"). Meanwhile, she regularly attends her community's Greek Night, or, as Constance calls it, "Freak Night," with the other Greek families in the area. After kissing a boy there, she wonders if things might turn around for her. Kadis successfully balances the dark material with Constance's teen ebullience and whimsy. In this joyful novel, being a "freak" means wielding a double-edged sword. Agent: Alexandra Machinist, CAA. (Mar.)

In mid-1970s London, a young woman talks to her posters of Marc Bolan and David Bowie about her plans to murder her father. Kadis' delightfully original debut novel is narrated by mordant misfit Constance Costa, aka "The Half Greek Imprisoned Daughter of The Fat Murderer." Her father has earned his moniker by virtue of a car accident that killed Connie's mother and two younger brothers. Now the two remaining family members are stuck with each other, all the more miserably since George Costa uses violent punishment to control his daughter's behavior. As she confides to the poster of Marc Bolan on her bedroom wall, "The Autumn Term Disco is one week away. I just want to be there, like a normal [almost] fifteen-year-old…and that unreasonable lunatic won't let me." She receives a reply: "Hm, I'd say being a lunatic and being unreasonable tend to go hand in hand"--but this, Connie fumes, "wasn't Marc. It's bloody David Bowie. David could be snitty and obscure and couldn't resist sticking his beak into everyone else's business." While the Fat Murderer prevents her from attending the disco, he requires weekly attendance at Friday night community gatherings known as Greek Night (aka Freak Night), the only upside of which is that she gets "to see the one person in [her] life who didn't make [her] want to vomit." Vasos Petrides is an almond-eyed dreamboat who "had shown [her] his penis for the first time when [they] were seven"; the pair continues to explore the possibilities of romance. There's also Auntie Roulla, who is not only aware of the Fat Murderer's abuse but also suspects an even more horrible secret. There hasn't been a novel this funny that contains an abuse plot since early Edward St. Aubyn, who's a contemporary of Kadis, debuting in her 60s after a career in music journalism. She certainly hasn't lost her grip on what it's like to be 15: The way she keeps the darkest parts of the book burning hot behind Connie's jokes, lists, nicknames, and wisecracks is both creatively daring and perfectly evocative of the melodramatic emotional shitshow that is adolescence. My Big Fat Greek Coming-of-Age Novel, narrated by one of the great teenage curmudgeons of recent literature. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.