Rating: 
Summary: No plot or character development
Review: Although the male author writes well from the perspective of a female adolescent, there is no plot or character development. The book was, in general, boring. I would have liked to see "the curse" more developed. Chrissie's friend, Tracey, was infact much more interesting than Chrissie herself.
Rating: 
Summary: A quick enjoyable read. I read it in one night.
Review: As some one who grew up in Downers Grove I have to say that about 90% of the places and descriptions in the book actually do exist and are accurate. At times I thought the character's conversations were a little too clever and thought out, but all in all I thought Michael Hornburg did a good job in capturing the feel of the Chicago Suburb. He blows the myth that the community is a "Father Knows Best" type place and puts a real face on Downers Grove.
Rating: 
Summary: What's so great about Catcher in the Rye?
Review: At a time when fiction offers more women writers than ever before, it is ironic that such an honest and poetic account of the life of a 17 year-old girl should be written by a 30-something man. Perhaps being liberated from biology and the tenets of 90's feminism allow Hornburg to explore his heroine's life more fully, illustrating a search for meaning that is universal.From the first sentence, we see Chrissie yearning to be transfigured, to rise above the vacuum of her fast food, styrofoam existence. She tries sex, drugs, and rock and roll (the standard vehicles for today's youth) to escape her suburban Inferno. In the end, she chooses not to escape, but to be herself, even if it means wearing a Dairy Queen uniform. If for nothing else, the message that what is important is not how much you matter to the world, but how much the world matters to you, is reason enough to read this book. One of the functions of literature is to allow us to intimately connect with another life, and in a time when teenagers are more and more marginalized and isolated, having a friend like Chrissie could be very valuable indeed.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting
Review: chrissie tries to graduate. single mother wantsmarriage. brother is in a drug fog. typical teen drama.
Rating:
Summary: teen dream
Review: Downers Grove is a hilarious, often moving, and mesmerizing read...I couldn't put it down, devoured the whole thing from start to finish. This is one of those books you'll return to again and again just for the delicious rush it provides. As in his previous book, Bongwater, Hornburg delights with his perfectly on point dialogue and fanciful yet direct narrative voice. Loved it!
Rating:
Summary: This book is not worth your time
Review: Fie on suburbanites! Woe and misery to all who live on or near a cul-de-sac! Rot for all eternity in backwater, white-trash hellpits like Downers Grove! Chrissie and her friend Tracy are stuck in stereotypical Midwestern suburbia surrounded by all that is ripe for contempt. School's almost out and both girls are hoping to graduate. And after all the wild parties, car chases, and casual sex, the two girls learn...nothing. They don't change at all. There is no realization, no bright epiphany to drive the story. There's just a long string of idle conversation and a whole lot of comparisons. "The astronaut was as far away from Dad as Jell-O is to mashed potatoes." "...she shined like a quarter found under a couch cushion." "The problem with jocks is they're as interchangeable as a lightbulb." Craving more? You've found your dream book. Mr Hornburg should have chosen a fictional town about which to write, as this book bears no resemblance to the actual Downers Grove of the 1990's. The author clearly spent little time researching the Chicago suburbs, and in deciding to write about an actual place, Hornburg should have gotten the facts straight. The Far West suburbs are no longer a string of farm towns littering Chicago's backyard. My familiarity with the area is greater than the average reader's, but that doesn't excuse the liberties that were taken. Major geographical mistakes are made throughout the book, and the increase of misspellings and grammatical errors in the final chapters leads me to believe that even the proofreaders couldn't stomach any more of this attempt at teenage coming-of-angst. Chrissie and Tracy are supposed to be exaggerated versions of teenaged girls, but their language and actions go way over the top into sheer unbelievablilty. Other reviewers have praised Hornburg for his keen ability to get inside a teenaged girl's head, but I disagree. I attended and later taught high school in Dupage County (where Downers Grove is located) and the level of mayhem and irrationality shown in the characters of Chrissie and Tracy doesn't fit the geography. As a former teenaged girl, Hornburg didn't successfully get into my head or the heads of any of the other teenaged girls I knew. The other characters (Chrissie's drugged-up brother, David, her desperately clueless mother, and her love interest, Bobby the trailer-trash mechanic)are equally overblown and uninteresting. With no character development, the story drags aimlessly and painfully on to an anti-climactic ending. To sum it up, this is a lousy book. If you like characters with no redeeming qualities, appreciate a thin plot that goes nowhere, and revel in an overabundance of pointless and often nonsensical similes and metaphors, then you'll enjoy Hornburg's Downers Grove.
Rating:
Summary: Hornburg Knows Best
Review: Having grown up (and still living well in) Downers Grove, I can tell you that Hornburg's characters are hopelessly mired in the 1970s - the era when he attended high school here. It's a case study of what some 40-year NYC author thinks teenagers in suburban Chicago are like in the late 1990s. As a result, the characters are horrible stereotypes. The glaring misspllings (Bowling Brook and Whicker Park) only serve to shed light on the fact that Hornburg knows nothing about the area he writes about. Hornbug comes off as what he is - an Upper East Side New Village deep thinker. Not sure if he's writing this book from his clouded memories, or if he actually took a brief ride through town with his trendy fiancee recently, where he could exclaim "Look - there's that old steakhouse. How LAME! What a wasteland the suburbs are! Aren't you glad we're so smart and hip and live in NYC and left this all behind. Let's go back to our hotel and mate like rabbits." But despite Hornburg's condensending attitude, the story is good, and well-written. It is interesting enough to keep my attention. This would be a better movie than book - give it to a director and let them clean up Hornburg's mess.
Rating:
Summary: an imperfect family in an imperfect world
Review: i don't know who the crotchety old men from aurora and arlington heights are,(probably the same guy) but what made them experts in literature? They strike me as the same people who told you to burn your Beatles records. The Downers Grove portrayed in this book is not the clean white right wing religious idiocracy, but rather,it focuses on the rough trade coolies who make life worth living. The Downers Grove portrayed in this book is absolutley true and accurate, as are the boys, girls, and parents, and I should know since I grew up in Downers Grove and graduated from South high school. Some of the stories are blown up, but that's what makes it a story. The only thing different is that the Santa Fe Speedway was torn down to make more room for more rich white people. Thank you Mr. Hornburg for preserving that sacred landmark, i lost my virginity in the parking lot after drinking a quart of Old Style with my boytoy of the moment. And thank you for writing a book that portrays women who take control of their lives.
Rating:
Summary: More
Review: I ever so wish that Michael Hornburg had more than his couple of books because I love them both. They are fun and witty. I love how they are fast paced.
They definitely perfect stories for independent films.
Rating:
Summary: Dead On
Review: I grew up in Chicago's Western suburbs and can say Hornburg evokes that place dead-on. I don't have anything against my hometown, but I'm not living there now for a reason. I remember being a 17-year-old girl and all the confusion and angst that comes with that (which, contrary to my expectations, this male author articulates artfully well). And I remember being that girl in a place so stultifying that we felt no qualms about taking risks. The main character, Chrissie, takes risks throughout the novel, too, and while some plot points were more believable than others, I never doubted her motivation. Now, this is not a perfect novel--if I were his editor we would have had a couple pow-wows for sure. But for what this novel does best--characterization, dialogue, setting--I think it's definitely worth a read, especially if you are a teenage girl at heart.
|
