I Am a Magical Teenage Princess
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I Am a Magical Teenage Princess
by Luke Geddes
Publication Date: 18th July, 2012
ISBN: 978-1-907681-16-5
Paperback, 234 pages
I Am a Magical Teenage Princess is a thematically linked collection of short stories celebrating and re-examining 1960s and contemporary culture, magnifying such popular icons as Betty and Veronica and Wonder Woman through a literary lens of wit and pathos. In ‘Surfer Girl’, the title character drifts through time, tormented by the bizarre clichés of drive-in B-movies. ‘Another Girl, Another Planet’ depicts a reluctant teenage astronaut idling away her post-apocalyptic adolescence huffing gasoline and fooling around with her five brutish shipmates, all named Tommy. ‘Habit Patterns’ shows us the beleaguered subject of an educational hygiene film who longs to break free from the cruel social strictures of her celluloid world.
In these and other stories, Luke Geddes experiments with poise and verve whilst retaining an unfakeable human touch often lacking in works more self-consciously centred on human interest. A book for the magical teenage princess in all of us, this debut short story collection welcomes a unique and surprisingly wise voice to the world of letters.
Contents
1 Surfer Girl
2 He’s a Rebel
3 Mom’s Team v. Dad’s Team
4 Betty and Veronica
5 The Party Don’t Stop
6 Invasion
7 Bongo the Space Ape
8 Another Girl, Another Planet
9 Wonder Woman’s Tampon
10 Habit Patterns
11 The Enormous Television Set
12 The Modern Stone Age
13 Defunct Girl Gangs of North American Drive-Ins
14 Express Lane
15 And I Would’ve Gotten Away With It If It Wasn’t For You Meddling Kids
About The Author
Luke Geddes is a PhD student of fiction at the University of Cincinnati. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in Hayden’s Ferry Review, Conjunctions, Mid-American Review, Washington Square, The Collagist, and other journals. He has presented papers at the ACLA, PCA/ACA, and University of Oregon’s “Understanding Superheroes” conferences. I Am a Magical Teenage Princess is his debut collection.
What People Say
“Anyway, one of my favorite books few people have heard of is I Am a Magical Teenage Princess, by Luke Geddes. It’s this amazing collection of short stories that is sharp and dark and mostly about teenage girls. The highlight is the story ‘Betty and Veronica,’ about the Archie Comics characters as lovers in a high school. I will reread that story every chance I get. It’s amazing and also so sexy.”
“In this vibrant recycling project, Luke Geddes transforms discarded cultural archetypes into particular and poignant drama, deeply imagined and deeply felt. Never content with mere Situation—no matter how funny or glorious in its invention—Geddes pushes always to Story, where ache surpasses wink. This is a substantial and entertaining debut.”
Chris Bachelder
“With a collector’s eye, Geddes finds the intricate bewilderments that glow in the periphery of our daily world with secret magic—the prick of a mouse’s rib bone, the orphaned flecks of lipstick on teeth—and moves them into center focus. The lasting images of these stories hang in your mind long after reading; this book is a luminous, tender gallery curated by an amazing new voice in fiction.”
Alissa Nutting
“It’s easy to sneer at ‘pop-culture detritus,’ but let’s face it—no matter how timeless and profound and unique we imagine our selves to be, we have no choice but to make them from the trash on hand. This is especially true of the teen bricoleur, that poor soul who has to cobble herself together from available materials: Scooby-Doo, drive-ins, soap operas in space, Wonder Woman, the Archies. The wonderfully playful and witty stories in Luke Geddes’ I Am a Magical Teenage Princess show just how resourcefully and delightfully that work can be done. You say whimsy and depth are incompatible? Nonsense. This is deep whimsy, is a book that employs rollicking sharp humor to explore the sad, solitary adolescent in all of us. Luke Geddes is a big talent, and this is a marvelous debut.”
Michael Griffith
Online Reviews