Joyland

(Paperback)

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Description

Welcome to 1984 and the town of South Wakefield. Chris Lane is 14 and he's sure that he can see the future - or at least guess what's inside Christie Brinkley's mind. But he can't foresee the closing of Joyland, the town's only video arcade. With the arcade's passing comes a summer of teenage lust, violence and a search for new entertainment. Schultz brings the Cold War home in a novel set to the digital pulse of video games and the echoes of hair metal.

Reviews

"I loved" Joyland". Tammy Lane is the most convincing child protagonist I've encountered in years, a cross between Lynda Barry's Marlys, and Judy Blume's truth-seeking missile, Margaret." "--"R. M. Vaughn, "National Post"
"Like a Reagan-era" Ice Storm", Emily Schultz's novel "Joyland "captures the confusion of adolescent sexuality in a tangle of pixillated icons via the video-game generation. Set in the summer of 1984, this book will have you thinking twice about the video-game generation and the power of pining and Pac-Man." " --Flare"
"Schultz's latest is a satire of office life, romance novels, and afterlife narratives. She has accomplished something quite remarkable here, deftly juggling all this social commentary and a rather blandly sympathetic protagonist with a sharp command of language." "--Publishers Weekly "on "Heaven Is Small"
"This is recommended reading, nostalgic technicolour at its sharpest. "Joyland "maps a believable world that depicts the grit and glitz of teenaged life in the small-town 1980s." "--Matrix Magazine"

Author Bio

Emily Schultz is the author of Black Coffee Night, which was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award for Best First Fiction, Heaven is Small, and Songs for the Dancing Chicken. She lives in Toronto. Nate Powell is a graphic novelist and illustrator whose work includes Any Empire and Swallow Me Whole, which won the Eisner Award for Best Graphic Novel and was a Los Angeles Times Book Prize Finalist. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana.