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The Book of Fred: A Novel.
by Abby Bardi
- Used
- Very Good
- Paperback
- Condition
- Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 0743411943
- ISBN 13
- 9780743411943
- Seller
-
Peninsula, Ohio, United States
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Washington Square Press, 2001. Ex-Library. Trade Paperback. Very Good. GREAT BOOK! NO SPINE CREASES & VERY MILD WEAR ON COVER. A FEW LIBRARY STAMPS, NO MARKS IN TEXT. Description: Filled with soulful humor and quiet pathos, Abby Bardi's boldly drawn first novel marks the debut of a joyfully talented chronicler of the quest for connection in contemporary life. Mary Fred Anderson, raised in an isolated fundamentalist sect whose primary obsessions seem to involve an imminent Apocalypse and the propagation of the name "Fred," is hardly your average fifteen-year-old. She has never watched TV, been to a supermarket, or even read much of anything beyond the inscrutable dogma laid out by the prophet Fred. But this is all before Mary Fred's whole world tilts irrevocably on its axis: before her brothers, Fred and Freddie, take sick and pass on to the place the Reverend Thigpen calls "the World Beyond"; before Mama and Papa are escorted from the Fredian Outpost in police vans; and Mary Fred herself is uprooted and placed in foster care with the Cullison family. It is here, at Alice Cullison's suburban home outside Washington, D.C., where everything really changes -- for all parties involved.Mary Fred's new guardian, Alice, is a large-hearted librarian who, several years after her divorce, can't seem to shake her grief and loneliness. Meanwhile, Alice's daughter Heather, also known as Puffin, buries any hint of her own adolescent loneliness beneath an impenetrable armor of caustic sarcasm, studied apathy, and technicolor hair. And the enigmatic Uncle Roy is Alice's perennially jobless and intensely private brother. As Mary Fred struggles to adjust to the oddities of this alien world, from sordid daytime television and processed food to aromatherapy and transsexuality, she gradually begins to have an unmistakable influence on the lives of her housemates. But when a horrifying act of violence shakes the foundations of Mary Fred's fragile new family, she finds herself forced to confront, painfully, the very nature of the way she was raised.With a knack for laying bare the absurdities of daily life, Abby Bardi captures, with grace and authority, all the ambivalence and emotional uncertainty at the heart of these quirky characters' awakenings.
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Details
- Seller
- Cuyahoga Valley Book Company (US)
- Seller's Inventory #
- 17433
- Title
- The Book of Fred: A Novel.
- Author
- Abby Bardi
- Format/Binding
- Trade Paperback
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Edition
- Ex-Library
- Binding
- Paperback
- ISBN 10
- 0743411943
- ISBN 13
- 9780743411943
- Publisher
- Washington Square Press
- Place of Publication
- New York
- Date Published
- 2001
Terms of Sale
Cuyahoga Valley Book Company
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About the Seller
Cuyahoga Valley Book Company
Biblio member since 2004
Peninsula, Ohio
About Cuyahoga Valley Book Company
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Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Trade Paperback
- Used to indicate any paperback book that is larger than a mass-market paperback and is often more similar in size to a hardcover...
- Spine
- The outer portion of a book which covers the actual binding. The spine usually faces outward when a book is placed on a shelf....
- New
- A new book is a book previously not circulated to a buyer. Although a new book is typically free of any faults or defects, "new"...