Title: I’m Just A Girl
Author: D.S. England
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
ISBN: 1662428766
Genre: General Fiction, Mystery, Thriller, Humor
Pages: 244
Reviewed by: David Allen
Hollywood Book Reviews
This book is a moving and emotional feast. I’m Just A Girl is a novel set-in a near future somewhat dystopian America. A pandemic computer virus has reduced a once thriving technologically heavy society to a shadow of its former self. People operate bars, restaurant and strip malls out of tiny enclaves of the surviving culture. Enter Alexandra Moody, a 22-year-old barista with a gift for gab. Her running commentary is precious, illuminating and almost always hilarious.
Alexandra narrates her progress from orphan waif to man crazy singleton in Orlando, Florida, once a tourist trap but now a ghost town. Unemployment and anomie are rule. Alexandra tends bar to a host of losers and otherwise disaffected customers, including Morticah, a 75-year-old cult leader and his gang of hoodlums in long coats. Willingly or not, Alexandra has an additional gift: she hears voices in her head that accurately predict the future. The prophetic voices propel the action; are a running tongue-in-cheek commentary on Alex and her foibles; and they might even save lives. Alexandra is a latter-day Joan of Arc. The voices jump start Alex’s mission–to save the world from terroristic plots and further disintegration.
The narrative is driven by Alex’s piquant observations and humor. She is equipped with an uncanny ability to reduce people and things to caricature and hyperbole. Her aphoristic commentary, her glib and ironic asides, adorn every page of this rollicking adventure in mirth. The book is reminiscent of John Kennedy Toole’s Confederacy of Dunces (not too shabby company for a debut novel!)
D.S. England’s bio reads like an excerpt from I’m Just A Girl. England, a resident of Orlando who has a Master’s degree from the University of Memphis, describes the book as “the culmination of a lifetime of school assignments, screenplays, manuscripts, wedding speeches, birthday cards and email exchanges where I always had to try to be the cleverest and most funny.” Protagonist Alexandra Moody, in and out of her cups, in and out of one hit-or-miss relationship after another, serves as a cracked mirror for the hellbent and alcohol-besotted society around her. The characters in this book are memorable, the narrative twists and turns are shocking and funny, and the outcome of all this personal and societal madness is surprising and wry.
I’m Just A Girl is a joyride, a pleasure to read; hopefully the writer has more to come.