Items related to Offsides
"A tremendously funny and touching book. I really loved it." —Diane Keaton Kerry Madden-Lunsford's fresh, often hilarious, debut novel presents a bittersweet and unforgettable tale of adolescence. On the surface, the Donegals seem the picture-perfect norm of a nuclear family in the 1970s. But seen through the eyes of Liz Donegal, her world teeters on the brink of disintegration. Liz's father, an assistant college football coach, uproots his family annually with the motivational compassion of "Get your ass in the car." Her brothers Joe-Sam and Leo, whose first words are "hut, hut, hike," and sister, Peaches, a wannabe cheerleader, pick apart their lives and tentatively pull together in whatever town they land in, whether it's Bobcat Country or Shark Territory. While chaos reigns within the Donegal household, outside the family dog Halfback is busy digging up his predecessor Bear Bryant. At the center of this remarkable cast of characters, Liz creates a world for herself spun out of best friends, books, secret glimpses at sex manuals, and a few adults who actually understand what it means to grow up "offsides." Fostered by the creativity of her aunt Betty and uncle Peter, Liz first glimpses life beyond football games and Catholic school. When she isn't busy rebelling, singing Lou Reed songs, or transforming herself into Helen Keller or Anne Frank, Liz is falling in love, discovering herself, and learning that life also has some painful lessons.
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About the Author:
An award-winning playwright living in Los Angeles, Kerry Madden-Lunsford has lived in eleven states, ten of which are football towns. She received her M.F.A. in Playwriting from the University of Tennessee, and has produced plays in the United States, England and China. Currently, Madden-Lunsford also teaches in East Los Angeles.
From Kirkus Reviews:
An amiable first novel that portrays the slow and reluctant coming of age of the tomboy daughter of a college football coach. Elizabeth Donegal carries all of the usual burdens that afflict the young and the insecure, plus one: She knows more about football than most of the boys and all of the girls in her class. That's because Liz's Daddy is an assistant coach and her life revolves around the football season of whatever college town they happen to be living in at the moment. ``Peace was not a high priority in a football family,'' according to Liz, who found out the hard way. Nearly every year, after all, the Donegals moved to a new town in the hope that Daddy could work his way up to Head Coach, and, as a result, a life lived out of suitcases and in motels and boys' dorms has left the Donegal children with only the vaguest conception (and no firsthand experience) of what most of their peers consider normal homes and family life. Religion provides some continuity for Liz (despite her early premonitions that she might be a feminist or lesbian), and she spends more and more of her spare time in Catholic circles. There, she meets her two first loves: Peter, an artistic loner who commits suicide during his freshman year at Notre Dame, and Robert, who can't seem to decide whether or not he wants to enter a seminary. Although the usual adolescent traumas that Liz suffers are far from lighthearted, there is surprisingly little anger in her telling of them, and her story as a whole is refreshingly free of the self- pity that trips up so many young novelists their first time out. The climax of the tale is as understated as its narration, and manages to be both credible and pungent. Pleasant, winning, and unpretentious. (Author tour) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
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- PublisherForeverland Press
- Publication date2014
- ISBN 10 0996040862
- ISBN 13 9780996040860
- BindingPaperback
- Number of pages530
- Rating
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