Sixteen Shades of Crazy

(Paperback)

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Description

Went out, got pissed. Same shit, different day.'
Aberalaw, a tiny South Wales valley village where nobody ever arrives and nobody ever leaves. The new police chief has declared war on recreational drugs, resulting in an eighteen-month drought. The party-loving wives and girlfriends of local punk band, The Boobs, are getting desperate, both for drugs and thrills: Ellie, factory girl with dreams of a better life in New York; Rhiannon, hairdresser with a taste for violence and designer clothes and Sin, unappreciated, obsessive compulsive mother of three.

Into their lives, enter the languid dark stranger, Johnny: Englishman, drug dealer and shameless seducer. In the space of just a few months, three women's lives will be changed forever.

Prize-winning writer, Rachel Trezise, dissects the morals and mores of a small Welsh village community with a scalpel-sharp pen and an incisive wit.

Reviews

Praise for Sixteen Shades of Crazy:

This anti-romantic portrayal of modern valley life rings with musical dialogue and hangover humour. THE INDEPENDENT

Trezise opens up the lives of her characters with surgical skill, making you wince as well as laugh. THE WESTERN MAIL

We in the know have come to expect brilliance from Rachel Trezise, and Sixteen Shades of Crazy doesn't disappoint. This is a powerful, unflinching and extremely funny novel. It's a beauty.DAN RHODES

Seamless and thoroughly enjoyableA keen observer of contemporary culture, Trezise has penned yet another winner. THE SUN-HERALD

Sixteen Shades of Crazy is a dirty but Day-Glo slice of modern Valleys life. NEW WELSH REVIEW

written with great energy and verbal skill and its characters are immediately engaging. SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

Trezise sings a sharp and suffocating song. THE AGE

On the one hand Sixteen Shades of Crazy finds Trezise sticking to her literary award-winning formula; unflinching yarns about the lifestyles, aspirations and collective hustle of working class characters (caricatures you might think on occasion) from her native Welsh valleys. On the other, her use of multiple narrative voices switching between three women whose friendship seems fuelled by convenience rather than closeness ramps up the interest factor of an already highly readable book. BUZZ MAGAZINE

Praise for Rachel Trezise:
Trezise is an outstanding young writer, with a wonderfully sharp,cynical take on contemporary Wales.THE TIMES

The new face of literature.HARPERS & QUEEN

A major new literary talent.THE WESTERN MAIL

Trezise writes with an irresistible self-indulgencethe same complete command of the English language as the heavyweights of contemporary fiction.THE BIG ISSUE

Author Bio

Rachel Trezise was born in Cwmparc in the Rhondda valley, south Wales in 1978.She studied Journalism and English at Glamorgan University and Geography and History at Limerick University, simultaneously writing her first novel. She graduated in 2000 and her semi-autobiographical novel In and Out of the Goldfish Bowl was published the same year. Described as 'A child's Christmas in Wales where the only present you can hope for is that your Mam really does kill your dad with the bread-knife this time,' it attracted much critical acclaim and won a place on the Orange Futures List in 2001. The book is studied in most Welsh Universities and is on the British Literature reading list at the University of Montreal. Later in the same year Trezise was chosen by the Guardian Hay Festival to be one of the first writers to participate in Scritture Giovanni, an annual project conceived in conjunction with The Literary festival of Mantova in Italy and the International Literature Festival of Berlin, devised to promote young European writers. In 2003, Harpers & Queen magazine voted her their 'new face of literature.' Her second book, a short story collection called Fresh Apples was published in 2005 and won the inaugural Dylan Thomas Prize in 2006. Andrew Davies, screenwriter and judge of the prize described the book as 'easily compared to James Joyce's Dubliners.' Shortly after accepting the prize, Trezise took up writer's residence at the University of Texas and married her long time fianc while in the States. Dial M for Merthyr, her third book, was published in 2007 and has been described as part reportage, part social history and part memoir. It follows a young Welsh band as they tour the British toilet circuit. It was voted Book of the Decade by the 'Glynneath Big 10 Max Boyce Prize. Her first venture into theatre, I Sing of a Maiden, a conversation between the ancient and contemporary, exploring teenage pregnancy and interspersed with folk song performed by Charlotte Greig, played to sell-out audiences in Wales in 2007 and is still on tour. Her first radio play Lemon Meringue Pie was broadcast on BBC Radio 4's Afternoon Play slot in September 2008. Her work has been translated into several languages and has been published in Australia and New Zealand, Denmark and Italy.