Hick (edition 2007)

“It’s such a funny joke that there are people like that and look what I got, look what I got.”

So what does thirteen-year-old Luli got? Well, not much. She’s got a too-broke dad, a mama who’s desperately trying to replace too-broke dad, and a falling down farm house in the middle of Nowhere, Nebraska. She’s also got a .45 Smith and Wesson her uncle gave her as some kind of gift. Luli’s also got a newly discovered not-so-secret weapon that “… cancels out too-broke Dad and cancels out dirt-lot brawls and cancels out that leaning, falling house …. I got something that’s gonna throw me straight into the sun and leave this shitty little dust-bin behind and you just wait, you just wait, to see how I make it go boom.” When too-broke dad leaves for good this time and mama takes off with an investment banker leaving Luli behind stranded in the middle of nowhere, Luli decides to cash in on that something and “… find a sugar-daddy who will fawn over me and feed me whenever I’m hungry, not just with sugar sandwiches but with rich-people food.” No more stale saltines and Halloween candy for this girl. She’s got big plans for herself. Sugar-daddies in the middle of Nebraska are hard to come by so she sets off for Vegas. Before she gets there she’s picked up by Eddie, a cowboy-knight in shiny pick-up truck who turns out to be trouble. Things go boom all right. But before the big explosion, there’s a whole cast of characters we meet on Luli’s journey.

I loved the movie version of this story but the novel left me feeling a little flat. The novel seems incredibly dark and grim compared to the movie which has quite a few light-hearted funny moments. The characters are not as well-rounded and likeable here as they are in the movie. There is a discrepancy between Cowboy Eddie played so brilliantly by Eddie Redmayne on film and the Eddie found in the book. In the movie, Eddie is charming and vulnerable – like a wounded puppy on the side of the road who may or may not bite you. What’s so unsettling about the movie is that you can never quite figure out whether Eddie is the good guy or the bad guy. He’s also heroic and a bit romantic in spots so when movie-Luli gives movie-Eddie stealthy, long sideways glances like he just might turn out to be the butter and sugar on her white-bread sugar sandwich, never mind that he’s twice her age, never mind that he might quite possibly be a psychopath, I bought into it. Couldn’t buy into it here. In print Eddie is just too one-dimensional and mean. I liked Glenda in the movie; I didn’t like this one. Even Luli seems more naïve and intelligent in the film version than she does in print.

The screenplay, also written by Andrea Portes, IMO, is more true-to-life and believable than what goes on here in print. The advantage to reading the novel is that you get to climb inside Luli’s head and see things the way she sees them. The writing here flows pretty effortlessly and it was an easy, quick read. After all, a thirteen-year-old girl is supposed to be telling us her story. I enjoyed Luli’s stream-of-consciousness narration. Occasionally, though, I thought there were some run on for days and can't catch your breath stream of consciousness sentences that were just too poetic and too profound for any 13-year-old to come up with -even one who has been forced to grow up too fast. For the most part, Luli's voice seemed very authentic and real. Sentences like this one made me laugh and gave me the feeling that no matter how this precarious journey was going to turn out, Luli would be OK: “And maybe I am just a two-bit hick from the heartland but I do know one thing, my mama did not raise me to be skankin it in skanksville with the skanks.” Nobody's raised Luli, she's raised herself, if we can call it that, and except for a brief, wonderful moment in the story, Luli's never had a chance to be a kid. Nobody’s more aware of this than Luli herself. When one of the real good guys in the story shows up he does something audacious. He calls Luli “...just a kid” and tells someone that he doesn’t “… want her to be traumatized or anything.”

"And when I hear this, I remember that there are people in the world who would actually try to make it so you were protected.... And when I remember that there are people like that, people who would try to keep you safe and read you bedtime stories and tuck you in, people who would make you hot chocolate and put in a nightlight and kiss your forehead last thing … when I think that there are people like that, people that I never met but that exist somewhere, people that I never even dreamed of, I want to start laughing. I want to start laughing cause it’s such a funny joke. It’s such a funny joke that there are people like that and look what I got, look what I got.

That’s a good one."

There are too many Luli’s in the world.
I’ve known a few of 'em.

A good story if you can handle it. ( )

Written from the point of view - and in the dialect - of a 13-year-old girl from Nebraska who decides to run away from her deadbeat parents. As expected, the man who picks her up on the highway turns out to be trouble. I wasn't that impressed with this one. It kept my attention but I didn't really care what happened to any of the characters. The dialect was pretty tiresome too. ( )

This is a coming-of-age book about a girl, Luli, who leaves home in search of a better life. At first I enjoyed the unique voice and perspective Luli's narrative voice offered, but there came a time when the constant accent started getting in the way. I think it worked really well in her vivid descriptions, but when it came to action, the plot would get dragged down by the voice, which started to feel contrived.

The plot also seemed to skip a beat in the last quarter. We're on the adventure right along with Luli, and then suddenly just when she gets into really high water, Portes starts skimming along on the surface, zipping past the tension into the resolution. It almost felt like Portes found the story going where she didn't want it to go, so she decided to quickly get to the ending instead of rewriting that section. In any case, it pulled me away from the character, to the point where I just wanted to find out how it ended. ( )