Crashing America: A Novel [Paperback]

Katia Noyes (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 2005

When her best friend dies, Girl, the 17-year-old street-punk narrator of Crashing America, leaves San Francisco for the heartland in search of a place where she can breathe again. Torn between her innate restlessness, an overwhelming longing for a sense of home, and a desperate fear of impending death, Girl seeks to link herself to almost anyone she crosses paths with: a bored housewife in Salt Lake City casting a net for illicit thrills, a born-again Christian punk rocker and his girlfriend, a teenage waitress in a small town with a horizon so endless Girl is terrified to leave her hotel room. On a farm in Nebraska with her old friend Randa, Randa’s boyfriend Bill, and Bill’s extended family, Girl finds something that seems awfully close to what she is seeking. But as the harvest progresses, what at first looked like salvation becomes something darker, and Girl hits the road in a stolen car headed for Memphis and one last chance for survival. Katia Noyes’ brave debut is a story about seeking the still point in an ever-turning world. With hell-bent accuracy, Noyes spins a tale about the forgotten people at the heart of America as revealing as an impromptu detour off an interstate highway.

Katia Noyes left home at the age of 15. She has worked as a roofer, math tutor, factory worker, and go-go dancer. An arts reporter and former columnist for SF Weekly in San Francisco, her fiction has been published in Home Stretch, Sex Spoken Here, and Paramour. She has twice been a finalist for the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund grant. Noyes currently develops content for educational publishers and remains involved with organizations that serve runaway youths.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Crashing America might be the Great American Novel." -- Curve Magazine, February 2005

"A fiercely well-written account of youth's desperation and longing for change." -- Girlfriends Magazine, September 2005

"A post-gay coming-of-age story as contemporary as it is timeless." -- Out Magazine, October 2005

"If there is such a thing as a fertility novel, Noyes has written it." -- BookSlut.com, June 2006

"It's like if Janis Joplin wrote a novel and didn't die on us, but sang the whole damn thing." -- Author Eileen Myles

"San Francisco writer Katia Noyes's rough-edged, gleaming first novel is a queer road trip to remember." -- The Advocate, September 13, 2005

One of the Ten Best Gay/Lesbian Books of 2005 -- Amazon.com

About the Author

Katia Noyes left home at the age of 15. She has worked as a roofer, math tutor, factory worker, and go-go dancer. An arts reporter and former columnist for SF Weekly in San Francisco, She has twice been a finalist for the Astraea Lesbian Writers Fund gran

Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Alyson Books (September 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1555839118
• ISBN-13: 978-1555839116
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,735,006 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars an exhilirating ride, September 6, 2005

By 

Diana J. Wynne (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crashing America: A Novel (Paperback)

Holden Caulfield, move over. Crashing America is the novel that teenagers would read in school, if they were allowed to. By turns thrilling, moving, and poetic, but always exquisitely written with a relentless spirit.

Looking forward to Katia Noyes' next novel...or the movie of this one.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars RAUNCHY, GRITTY TOMBOY GOES "ON THE ROAD", February 14, 2007

By 

Mark V. Rose Dr "Mark V. Rose" (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crashing America: A Novel (Paperback)

By MARK V. ROSE, author of BANGKOK, OH BOY! San Francisco, CA
Often funny but sometimes painful adventures of an adolescent lesbian who leaves disappointment in San Francisco (where her partner has just died of a drug overdose) to hit the road for America's heartland. In a raunchy seach for freedom, fulfillment and personal identity, the gritty tomboy heroine (called "Girl") hitchhikes, steals bikes and cars, money and change, works the fields, people and the police and bunks down with attractive and less attractive, oddball partners. Katia Noyes's CRASHING AMERICA is an honest and open tale of a very brazen, but sensitive, rootless young woman who tries to find and even plant some roots in America's farm belt, showing quite another side of the "farm girl" tradition. And, Noyes demonstrates a refreshing other geographical direction--the usual one is towards the western mecca of San Francisco where the disenfranchised try to find "roots"-- Noyes takes us away from it and into the small towns and fields of Utah, Iowa, the prairie and the cornfields of the midwest towards Randa, an older woman she had met earlier in the west and thought she was in love with. She has much more to learn.
I first heard Katia Noyes, a California author, read passages of the book at the San Francisco Public Library and enjoyed her unrelentless humor and directness. It's all there in the book along with a fascinating array of other authentic midwestern characters. And, it's not just for "tom boys." Highly recommended. An extra bonus is the way Noyes uses a unique and individuaized language to express "Girl's" monologue and dialogue. She creates new language rules and it is delightful!

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars CRASHING AMERICA: They just don't write them any better than this, October 8, 2005

By 

R. B. Sayers (AZ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Crashing America: A Novel (Paperback)

CRASHING AMERICA violently throws the reader into the head and heart of a seventeen year old street girl infiltrating the American heartland in a poignant search for stability and love. Two pages of Noyes' masterpiece, and the reader has forgotten their own values and become totally immersed in the protagonist's scramble for money, for survival, and above all for a sense of place. It's a brilliant retake of the classic road trip to California story, with Girl, the hip-cynical protagonist, leaving San Francisco and heading into the Midwest, showing the reader farm life through outsider takes which are sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, and always insightful. The story is supercharged with a sense of movement, as Girl flees one crisis only to end up in another, constantly reaching out to a society that seems to never reach back.

This is a story which captivates both with the tale, and with the voice in which Noyes tells it. She's a master of language; every page makes the reader gasp in delight at a fresh and vivid expression. Reading her prose is like taking a purge to cleanse one's system of stodgy old similes and clichés. Ms. Noyes makes it look easy, but there's a master behind the scenes, measuring out heady doses of character and conflict in a broth of beautiful yet electrifying language that will make the reader wish this road trip will never end.