September 27–October 4, 2001

book quicks|fiction

Downers Grove

By Michael Hornburg
Grove Press, 213 pp., $12

Even people who felt that growing up in the suburbs was like being a piece of fruit rotting from the inside out will be taken aback at the world Michael Hornburg has created in his second novel, Downers Grove (fairly new to paperback). As the story counts down toward Chrissie Snow’s high school graduation day, she heaves a car battery through the windshield of a car chasing her and her best friend (packed with bullying boys who should have accepted the first "no" they heard). Now, there’s a "death car" following her everywhere seeking revenge; dog carcasses turn up in her driveway and firebombs go off in her locker. Plus, her mom is jetting off to Las Vegas with a new guy, which leaves Chrissie free to go to parties and tend the crush she has on the brooding and handsome new mechanic in town. Finally, there’s the curse, which means one senior must die before graduation. But throughout this whirlwind of fast-paced mostly illegal action, Chrissie remains calm and introspective at the center. She’s perhaps the least self-obsessed teenager ever found in literature. Take that, Holden Caulfield.

Downers Grove contains great cinematic elements, equal parts Lolita and Rebel Without a Cause (the book is being adapted for the screen, the second of Hornburg’s works to make it to celluloid): the illegal late-night drag races at the track, a petrochemical fire from which the local preachers get major metaphorical mileage, the local strip club whose tattooed owner is also hot for Chrissie’s crush. Nothing fantastic, just a regular pre-fab town, just as Chrissie is a regular girl, counting down what could be her last days on earth, and holding on to her priorities: friends, family, boys and parties. If she can make it to graduation, she’ll have the rest of her life to figure out whatever else life might have to offer.

—Alex Richmond