Publisher's Synopsis
In an unnamed town in the summer of 1998, Judy is an isolated and inexperienced teenager on the cusp of adulthood struggling to craft an identity for herself- especially as the artist she wants to be. There is little help around her. Her only friends are increasingly obsessed with a cultish belief in a coming " Big Shadow." Her mother is afraid of life and finds solace in TV shows. Then Judy meets Maurice Blunt, a visiting summer poetry class professor who is a " has-been" fixture of the 1970s NYC punk music scene. Judy believes Maurice- a man more than twice her age desperately seeking lost adoration- is the ticket out of her current life. Soon, she begins taking secret weekend trips to visit him.Judy' s visits to New York bring hopes of belonging to the city' s cultural world and making a living as a video artist. With each trip and frustrated promise, however, she comes to realize that there is a price to pay for her golden ticket entry into this insular and moribund scene. A delicious novel of psychological nuance and dark humour, Big Shadow explores the costs of self-deceit, fandom, and tenuous ambitions, exposing the lies we' ll tell ourselves to edge closer to what we want.
