Nina

For those who aren't familiar with his work as the vocalist for rock legends Dwarves, Blag Dahlia's novel will rock them without the music. "Nina" is about a young woman's trip through adulthood. Midwestern teenage misfit and partial epileptic Nina is home alone while her parents are on vacation. After learning of her parents' loss in an plane crash, Nina seduces EVERYone and gets in several fights while fending for herself. Then on a journey in the Golden State, she raises hell with hippies in San Francisco. Nina starts riots everwhere she goes in California! After first clubbing in Los Angeles, and beach-bumming in San Diego, Nina returns to the Midwest. But her transformative personal journey is not close to ending. What makes Dahlia's prose so iridescent is his characterization. Armed with insights of punk chicks from over 20 years of intensive travel, Dahlia's character is a believable (anti)hero supreme. One who is fun and interesting to listen to, who flourishes under Dahlia's pen because of his vivid similes such as: "Wayne Wygant, always a day late and three bucks short, still clung to life like a pawn surrounded by kings, queens and bishops eager to end the charade once and for all. In his death throes, his heading bleeding freely, his tongue lolling out of his head he spied Nina and thought that a dark angel had come to escort him personally to the Great Beyond. He reached out with what was left of his right hand." For fans of the satiric farces of Nathanael West, the quick pace of Barry Gifford, and imploded Sweet Valley High novel dialogues, it doesn't get any better than Dahlia's "Nina".