Elliot Allagash: A Novel - Softcover

Rich, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0812980395 ISBN 13: 9780812980394

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks, 2011

Synopsis

Painfully shy and physically inept, Seymour Herson is the lowest student on the social totem pole at Glendale, a private school in Manhattan. But Seymour’s solitary existence comes to a swift end when he meets the new transfer student, Elliot Allagash, evil heir to America’s largest fortune. Bitter and bored with Glendale’s pedestrian surroundings, Elliot decides to take up a challenging and expensive hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular boy in the school. With Elliot as his diabolical strategist, investor, and unlikely best friend, Seymour scores a spot on the basketball team, becomes class president, and ruthlessly destroys his enemies. Yet despite the glow of newfound popularity, Seymour feels increasingly uneasy with Elliot’s wily designs. For an Allagash victory is dishonorable at its best, and positively ruinous at its worst.

About this title

Review

Seth Meyers Reviews Elliott Allagash

Seth Meyers is completing his ninth season on Saturday Night Live, his fourth season as head writer, and his fourth season as anchor of "Weekend Update." Meyers heads a writing staff that has won three Writer's Guild Awards as well as a Peabody for the show's 2008 election coverage. Read his review of Elliot Allagash:

We hired Simon Rich at SNL because of his amazing short fiction. When he told us he was writing a novel we made it clear that were it not up to his previous high standard we would have no choice but to terminate his employment. Well, I just finished Elliot Allagash and I’m happy to say, he still has his job.

Elliot Allagash takes place in eighth grade and this is great news for anyone familiar with Simon’s writing. Every comedy writer I know went through eighth grade but none render the details of it quite like Simon. Familiar schoolyard archetypes from nerds to bullies to hot girls all appear but they’re sharper than ever.

And it would be enough if Simon just spent his book examining the status ladder of Glendale Academy but fortunately there is so much more. Because the title character, Elliot Allagash is one of the best villains I’ve ever encountered in fiction. By age thirteen his offenses include "vandalism, truancy, unprovoked violence, drunkenness, hiring an imposter to take a standardized test, and blackmail." In a classic deal-with-the-devil arrangement Elliot offers to make Seymour, our hero, the most popular kid in the school with the simple condition that Seymour must do everything Elliot says. What makes this journey delightful is that Elliot is extremely rich.

The details of Elliot’s wealth are joyous to read and too numerous to count. My favorite--the Allagash family belongs to the Seven Circles Club, a club so exclusive that they denied George Washington’s only son membership because "his father was a farmer."

A lot of very successful adults I know still wish they could re-live high school as someone popular. Reading this hilarious morality tale about the cost of that popularity makes me happy that I went through my high school years as an outsider. And it makes me even happier that Simon Rich did.

About the Author

 Simon Rich has written for The New Yorker, GQ, Mad, The Harvard Lampoon and other magazines. He is the author of two humor collections, Free-Range Chickens and Ant Farm, which was a finalist for the 2008 Thurber Prize for American Humor. He lives in Brooklyn and writes for Saturday Night Live. He is twenty-five.
From the Hardcover edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0812980395
• ISBN 13: 9780812980394
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240