Missy

(Paperback)

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Description

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.

Reviews

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 *

Author Bio

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.