Beginner's Luck: A Novel (Hallie Palmer, Band 1) - Softcover

Pedersen, Laura

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345458303 ISBN 13: 9780345458308

Verlag: Random House Publishing Group, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

“Laura Pedersen delivers . . . Throughout, you can’t help but think how hilarious some of the scenes would play on the big screen.”—The Hartford Courant

“There could be no doubt left in anyone’s mind that my life had all the makings of a country-and-western song.”

The second of seven children (with another on the way), Hallie Palmer has one dream: to make it to Vegas. Normally blessed with an uncanny gift for winning at games of chance, she’s just hit a losing streak. She’ s been kicked out of the casino she frequents during school hours, lost all her money for a car on a bad bet at the track, and has been grounded by her parents. Hallie decides the time as come to cut her losses.

Answering an ad in the local paper, she lands a job as yard person at the elegant home of the sixty-ish Mrs. Olivia Stockton, a wonderfully eccentric rebel who scribes acclaimed poetry along with the occasional soft-core porn story. Under the same wild roof is Olivia’s son, Bernard, an antiques dealer and gourmet cook who turns out mouthwatering cuisine and scathing witticisms, and Gil, Bernard’s lover, whose down-to-earth sensibilities provide a perfect foil to the Stocktons’ outrageous joie de vivre. Here, in this anything-goes household, Hallie has found a new family. And she’s about to receive the education of her life.

From a wonderful new voice in fiction comes the freshest and funniest novel to barrel down the pike since Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café. In Beginner’s Luck, Laura Pedersen introduces us to the endearing oddballs and eccentrics of Cosgrove County, Ohio, who burst to life and steal our hearts–and none more so than Hallie Palmer, sixteen, savvy, and wise beyond her years, a young woman who knows life is a gamble . . . and sometimes you have to bet the house.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Laura Pedersen is an author and playwright from Buffalo, New York. After finishing high school in 1983, she moved to Manhattan and began working on the American Stock Exchange, later spending the better part of the 1990s writing for The New York Times. In 1994, President Clinton honored her as one of Ten Outstanding Young Americans. She has appeared on varioius TV shows, including Oprah, Good Morning America, Primetime Live, and The Late Show with David Letterman. In 2001, her first novel, Going Away Party, won the Three Oaks Prize for fiction. Her other books include Beginner's Luck, The Big Shuffle, Heart's Desire, and Last Call. Laura lives in New York City.

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""There could be no doubt left in anyone's mind that my life had all the makings of a country-and-western song."
The second of seven children (with another on the way), Hallie Palmer has one dream: to make it to Vegas. Normally blessed with an uncanny gift for winning at games of chance, she's just hit a losing streak. She's been kicked out of the casino she frequents during school hours, lost all her money for a car on a bad bet at the track, and has been grounded by her parents. Hallie decides the time as come to cut her losses.
Answering an ad in the local paper, she lands a job as yard person at the elegant home of the sixty-ish Mrs. Olivia Stockton, a wonderfully eccentric rebel who scribes acclaimed poetry along with the occasional soft-core porn story. Under the same wild roof is Olivia's son, Bernard, an antiques dealer and gourmet cook who turns out mouthwatering cuisine and scathing witticisms, and Gil, Bernard's lover, whose down-to-earth sensibilities provide a perfect foil to the Stocktons' outrageous "joie de vivre. Here, in this anything-goes household, Hallie has found a new family. And she's about to receive the education of her life.
From a wonderful new voice in fiction comes the freshest and funniest novel to barrel down the pike since "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. In "Beginner's Luck, Laura Pedersen introduces us to the endearing oddballs and eccentrics of Cosgrove County, Ohio, who burst to life and steal our hearts-and none more so than Hallie Palmer, sixteen, savvy, and wise beyond her years, a young woman who knows life is a gamble . . . and sometimes you have to bet the house.

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Down and Out in Cosgrove County

It's only midafternoon and already the whole day is a bust. I may only be a sixteen-year-old girl, but I'm an experienced gambler and so I believe in probability, not luck. But on days like this, you really have to wonder.

The air is hot and still and feels like a weight up against my chest. I push down hard on the pedals of my bike because I'm so aggravated. Who does that cheapskate Mr. Exner think he is, trying to give me fifty cents apiece for Titleist golf balls that were hit twice at most? Balls I can clearly see he's repackaging as new and hawking for twelve bucks a dozen. Meantime I'm the one with leeches all over my ass after dredging the swamp otherwise known as the Municipal Golf Course. Grown-ups love to chisel teenagers because they figure we don't really need the money, that we're only going to blow it on concerts and incense. And then they wonder why we start packing automatic weapons in our lunch boxes.

However, I decide to conserve my anger for this afternoon's soccer game. Our opponents, the Timpany Tigers, are a ferocious team-tall, mean, yellow-eyed, and all elbows. They live atop one of Ohio's thirty-eight hazardous waste sites, and obviously more than a few drums of toxic chemicals have seeped into their drinking water.

It's almost two o'clock when the school parking lot comes into view. Only thoughts are churning in my head like an out-of-control slot machine, so I forget to look before hanging a Louie and therefore don't notice the handicapped school bus creeping along behind me. Fade to blacktop.

I regain muscle movement in a hailstorm. The hard white golf balls clunking against my skull have acquired the velocity of flying soup cans. Bloody gravel-flecked road pizza now decorates my palms. And though my wrists are only bruised, it feels as if I've just arm-wrestled a security guard. Both elbows of my sweater are torn, and even though this outfit can't exactly be classified as women's better sportswear, Mom will be mad that it's headed for the trash instead of her beloved hand-me-down bin.

The driver of the bus, a middle-aged man in full Mr. Rogers cardigan and khakis regalia, dashes over with a look of awestruck terror-fearful of a lawsuit, yet secretly thrilled by the job security of another rider for his specially ramp-equipped vehicle.

"Are you all right?" His radio is poised, ready to call 911.

"I'm okay. My fault." Gradually I rise and check to ascertain whether all my limbs are still attached and look around to make sure I'm not seeing double. Only I'm seeing spots. Eighty-two white spots bouncing across the blacktop and into the gully, almost fifty bucks' worth of golf balls. Do I chase after them? No. I'll miss the last class and won't be allowed to play in the soc- cer game.

After adjusting the handlebars I remount my bike. The bus driver slowly follows me into the school parking lot. Part of me wishes he would just gun it and finish me off like a lame horse. The sunny September afternoon only serves to make the dark gray cinder-block building appear even more flat and gruesome than usual, if that's possible.

Aside from this particular architectural monstrosity the town is okay looking-stately old buildings like the courthouse and the public library with pitched roofs, a couple of white pillars out front, and stone carvings of people in togas with some leaves stuck in their hair. But Patrick Henry High School was built much later. Before that the district wasn't big enough to have its own public school. And when the Town Council finally did get around to building one they apparently hired an escaped mental patient who thought it would be a terrific idea to combine the steel and glass construction of a smelting plant with the concrete block design of a maximum-security prison. Walking through the metal doors, you basically expect someone in a warden's uniform to throw a pile of license plates, a brush, and a can of black paint your way and bark start stenciling. The institution certainly brings to mind the three R's-ropes, revolvers, and razor blades.

When I enter the building a bell alerts me that the next period starts in exactly two minutes. There's barely enough time to stop at my locker. As I grab my social studies notebook another bell heralds the start of the final class of the day.

It's not as if social studies is any great party I don't want to miss out on. But Mr. Graves, my teacher, also happens to be the soccer coach. And if he discovers that I wasn't in the brig all day he won't let me play. The other slow self-starters are busy trying to blend into the laminated Mercator projection world map covering most of the back wall. There's one chair left in the last row in front of New Zealand.

On his pudgy round face Mr. Graves wears square-shaped glasses with black plastic frames that double as bulletproof shields. They make his pupils appear to be contracting and expanding as he shifts his eyeballs from left to right, and so behind his back the kids call him Old Fish Eyes. He's chalked a list of the original thirteen colonies on the blackboard along with the names of the companies or individuals that founded them, in what year, when they received a charter, and their status in 1775. He could have distributed photocopies of this list. But no, he's worried that life is too cushy for us, what with EraserMate pens and word processors. Back when he was in school kids probably had to hunt pterodactyls in order to make ink out of the blood.

With all the best intentions I carefully scribe Hallie Palmer, Grade 11 S.S. at the top of a clean white page with delicate aquamarine lines horizontally traversing it. However, the paper presents an opportunity to perform a few calculations of my own. With approximately twenty-one hundred dollars in the bank and the birthday money from my folks, if everything goes exactly according to plan, then a used car should be within reach in two more weeks. Though if I'd taken Cheap Old Mr. Exner's offer of forty-one bucks for the stupid golf balls rather than insisted on waiting to shop them to Mr. Burke down at the hardware store, I wouldn't have wasted an entire morning's work.

Leaning my head back against the Tasman Sea on the smooth vinyl map, I nod off. The school may teach a lot about history, but somehow they missed the advent of the window shade. It's about a hundred degrees near the outside wall. And I'd been up most of the night before handicapping tomorrow's horse races. A couple other kids are also slowly losing consciousness, as if fairy dust has been sprinkled, and eyelids simultaneously droop to Mr. Graves's hypnotic buzz: Pine-forested Georgia, with the harbor of Savannah nourishing its chief settlement, was formally founded in 1733.

When the ten-minute bell clangs like a fire alarm from out of the speaker above the round Seth Thomas wall clock, all the covert dozers, myself included, are jarred awake. The gaze of the entire class automatically drifts upward in the direction of the clock, which briefly shivers from the vibra- tion, the second hand practically moving backward until the clattering subsides. Mr. Graves continues like an icebreaker crushing through the North Atlantic, but to no avail. It's Friday afternoon of homecoming weekend and the room is whirring with the sound of closing notebooks, giggling girls, crumpling papers, and the rasps of metal chairs scraping across the floor. For Mr. Graves to go on is like trying to halt sailors heading down the gangplank for a long-awaited shore leave. A boy in the second row hurls a softball-sized rubber band ball directly above Mr. Graves's head. It goes thwack just inches away from the top of his skull and bounces back into the fast hands of another student. Mr. Graves turns quickly (at least quickly for him) in an attempt to catch the perpetrator in the...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2003
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0345458303
• ISBN 13: 9780345458308
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 368
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar