HICK
Andrea Portes
Unbridled Books
Fiction
ISBN-10: 1932961321
ISBN-13: 97819329613214

• About the Book
• Read an Excerpt
• Author Interview -- June 8, 2007

Andrea Portes's debut novel is as saucy and gritty as they come. Set among the cornfields of Nebraska and the Southwestern desert sands, HICK is bubbling over with all the trashy fixins of a good old-fashioned trailer park melodrama. Brace yourselves, readers, this book isn't easy to get through, but it sure is entertaining.

HICK's protagonist is a brazen, big-mouthed 13-year-old named Luli McMullen. She lives with her parents in a small town just down the road from Lincoln, Nebraska. "If you threw Elvis and a scarecrow in a blender, topped the whole thing off with Seagram's 7 and pressed dice, you would make [her] dad," Nick. Her mom, Tammy, is "some kind of aging Brigitte Bardot, ten years later and twenty pounds past what might have been." A pair of selfish and pathetic boozers, the two define neglect on all counts.

Clearly, the McMullen clan is dysfunctional times 20, and Luli's emotional stability and physical development is consequently worse for the wear. "Seems like I've spent my entire life poised somewhere between boredom and anxiety," she says of her upbringing, "staring out the window somewhere, in a quiet panic, listening to the wind and waiting for the other shoe to drop."

Rather than stick around to watch her absentee parents get jacked up on yet another round of drinks and yelling, Luli decides to do what any (ab)normal teen would do --- hit the road in search of bluer skies. On her way to Vegas, she thumbs for rides, sleeps in ditches, and sass-talks her way in and out of grungy roadside bars.

Eventually, she hooks up with a brassy twenty-something named Glenda, who seems to be just about the furthest thing from a good witch that a girl could get. Glenda takes Luli under her wing, and together the two snort blow off the dashboard, smoke cigarettes and rabble rouse their way through the Midwest.

Until, that is, they reconnect with Eddie Kreezer --- one of Luli's hitched rides and, coincidentally, Glenda's ex-fling. Although Eddie is the next closest thing to ugly, Luli is simultaneously smitten with and repulsed by him. She flirts with him and mouths off to her heart's content, and all seems right as rain until he uses her as collateral for a pool game gone bad. Which seems despicable until it gets worse. Much worse.

Under the guise of "taking her off Glenda's hands," Eddie basically kidnaps Luli, rapes her in a field, takes her to a cabin in the woods, ties her to a bed and screws her silly for three days until Glenda figures out what happened and comes to rescue her.

What comes next --- a series of fast-paced scenes leading up to a racy conclusion, Bonnie & Clyde-style --- provides just the right kicker to an already warped narrative. Readers will be shocked, but not surprised, to see how Luli deals with it.

All in all, HICK is a shining example of a teen outcast/roadie rant, what with its bawdy underpinnings and never-ending debauchery. Portes has a knack for turning a phrase (although they seem too piled on at times), and Luli's badass yet vulnerable voice is consistent throughout. Some readers might balk at Luli's so-called maturity despite her young age (it seems unbelievable at times, mainly because it's written in the first person), but most will get a kick out of her story, if only to be thankful they're not her.

   --- Reviewed by Alexis Burling

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