Search - Roustabout: A Fiction

 
Roustabout: A Fiction
Author: Michelle Chalfoun

Book Information
Publisher: Harpercollins
Book Type: Hardcover
Rating:
3

ISBN-13: 9780060172978 - ISBN-10: 0060172975
Publication Date: 4/1996
Pages: 223


Other Versions of this Book: Paperback

Book Description:
Some children dream of joining the circus. Mat dreams of escaping it. Abandoned by her mother when she was five, she was adopted into a traveling circus where the only solace she could find was in her work helping rig the circus tent. Now 15 years old, she has created a family from an odd menagerie of circus hands. There's Al, a hard-drinking cook and one-time transvestite clown; Tante, the costume mistress, whose disfiguring scars run deeper than her skin; and her lover Jayson, the ring crew-chief 20 years her senior. Together they inhabit a peripatetic world of drugs, booze and sex that Mat secretly longs to leave.

Written with the insider savvy of an author who has lived the circus life, Roustabout marks a debut of uncommon impact that readers will not soon forget.


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Harlean G. (rockytopp) reviewed 1/17/2007...
+ read 57 more book reviews by this member


Roustabout is a gritty, realistic, disturbing portrait of the circus every child, at some point dreamed of joining. Mat dreams of escaping. Abandoned by her mother, molested by her stepfather, she sees through the glitter and fantasy of the bigtop to the grimy reality of the backlot.


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