Missy
By (Author) Chris Hannan
Vintage Publishing
Vintage
15th July 2009
United Kingdom
General
Fiction
823.914
Winner of McKitterick Prize 2009
Paperback
304
Width 129mm, Height 198mm, Spine 18mm
215g
Sex, drugs and the Wild West! Dol McQueen -- the frank and funny narrator of Missy is an anti-heroine to fall fiercely in love with. Dol McQueen, an irrepressible, opium-addicted 'flash-girl' from the Wild West is headed east for new adventures when she stops to saves a man from killing himself, only to discover he is a murderous pimp who really didn't want to be rescued. When the pimp then turns up at the saloon bar where she and her friends have found work - and plenty more - with a crate of stolen opium he wants her to hide, Dol sees a chance to change her life for good and goes on the run into the American wilderness. But the pimp is on her tail, along with a gang of mobsters and her crazy, self-obsessed mother; can Dol save her friends, her mother, and herself Like her literary predecessors, Becky Sharpe and Moll Flanders, Dol is a flawed but irresistible anti-heroine, and Missy is an astounding debut.
When a brilliant, award-winning Scottish playwright produces a first novel, you don't expect to be recommending it as a perfect beach read...Funny and exhilarating - Moll Flanders on drugs * The Times *
Narrated by one of the more luminous characters in recent fiction * Guardian *
A gorgeously sassy opening, it is surprising how winning, and how powerful, the voice of Dol McQueen, 19th-century American "flash-girl" actually is... Hannan has traversed the limits of history and given us a thoroughly modern woman * Independent *
Hannan is comparable to no playwright working today so much as the Renaissance masters. He has a density of expression, a control of populous scenes, a sense of dramatic development and a sheer verve which few writers, living or dead, can touch * Sunday Times *
An action-packed page-turner...riveting * Scotland on Sunday *
Missy is the first novel by playwright Chris Hannan. Born in Clydebank, Scotland, son of a shipyard worker and a teacher, Chris graduated with a first-class honours degree from Oxford University before going to work with homeless people in a Glasgow night-shelter. His award-winning plays include Shining Souls, The Evil Doers, Elizabeth Gordon Quinn and The Baby; and have been staged by the Royal Shakespeare Company, the National Theatre of Scotland and Sir Peter Hall at the Old Vic. In 2001/02 he was Judith E. Wilson Visiting Fellow in Drama at the University of Cambridge. He lives in Edinburgh.