Me and Mr Booker

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Looking back, Martha could've said no when Mr Booker first tried to kiss her. That would've been the sensible thing to do. But Martha is sixteen, she lives in a small dull town--a cemetery with lights--her father is mad, her home is stifling, and she's waiting for the rest of her life to begin. Of course Martha would kiss the charming Englishman who brightened her world with style, adventure, whiskey, cigarettes and sex.But Martha didn't count on the consequences.Me and Mr Booker is a story about feeling old when you're young and acting young when you're not.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Publishers Weekly Review

Restlessness pervades Taylor's debut novel of suburban claustrophobia and the difficulty of cutting ties to even an unhappy home. "Everyone in it was like me, trying to move on and start something, anything at all, even if it was almost certain to go bad," explains 16-year-old narrator Martha. Like the town's other residents, she drinks copiously and waits for something to happen that will give color to her humdrum life. She finds Mr. Booker, a smooth-talking Englishman, who, fueled by mutual feelings of being trapped and bored with life, begins an affair with her made all the easier by his wife's proclivity for falling asleep in a boozy haze. After years of watching her father manipulate her mother and having an outsider status at school, Martha feels like her life has finally begun. Meanwhile, her mother throws parties to "get her through the weekends" and her father becomes increasingly unstable, prompting the return of her aloof older brother, Eddie. Taylor's straightforward prose captures the nuances of being at an age where you cannot see the differences between being a teenager and being an adult. Unfortunately, the characters, although well-drawn, are forgettable, and the novel leaves only impressions of discontent. Agent: Nathaniel Jacks, Inkwell Management. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Australian Taylor's debut is a Lolita-esque tale of 16-year-old Martha's affair with an unhappily married older man. Martha meets Mr. Booker and his wife at a party hosted by her mother and immediately falls under the sway of the glamorous couple. Before long, they are taking her clothes shopping and paying for her to get her hair styled. It's a welcome escape for Martha, who wishes her mother would kick her feckless father to the curb once and for all. Martha falls into an affair with Mr. Booker and discovers the dissatisfaction behind the facade of his carefree life with Mrs. Booker. Her mother and Mrs. Booker remain blissfully ignorant, but Martha's father, when he isn't concentrating on his latest scheme to get money from Martha's mother, is suspicious of the amount of time Martha is spending with this older friend of the family. It's hard to sympathize with Taylor's characters, particularly Martha's self-involved parents, but this unsentimental coming-of-age story presents a nice counterpoint to the typically dramatic tales of teenage angst.--Huntley, Kristine Copyright 2010 Booklist