Elliot Allagash - Softcover

Rich, Simon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1846687551 ISBN 13: 9781846687556

Publisher: Serpent's Tail, 2011

Synopsis

Seymour isn't cool, but he isn't a geek either. He's a lonely, obedient 8th grade loser at Glendale, a second tier prep school in Manhattan. His chubbiness has recently earned him the nick name "Chunk Style" and he has resigned himself to a life of isolation. All of this is about to change.
After successfully getting himself expelled from every reputable school in the country, Elliot Allagash, the arrogant heir of America's largest fortune, finds himself marooned at Glendale. Try as he may, Elliot cannot get expelled this time; his father has donated too much money. Bitter and bored, Elliot decides to amuse himself by taking up a new hobby: transforming Seymour into the most popular student in school.
An unlikely friendship develops between these two loners as Elliot introduces Seymour to new concepts, like power, sabotage and vengeance. With Elliot as his diabolical guide, Seymour gradually learns about all of the incredible things that money can buy, and the one or two things that it can't. Hilarious, ingenious and tightly plotted, Elliot Allagash reminds you what your teens were like, and why growing up is so hard to do.

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: Serpent's Tail
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1846687551
• ISBN 13: 9781846687556
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240