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about Better Than Running at Night
Having removed the overly dramatic makeup of her solitary high
school days, Ellie looks forward to recreating herself and her
art. Arriving alone for winter session at the New England College
of Art and Design, Ellie finds the ideal opportunity to do so.
In her first days she begins dirty dancing with the devil. Then
she makes out with him. A story about independence, trust, and
boys.
excerpt from Better Than Running at Night
My parents named me after a mutual hallucination they had while
tripping on acid. They didn't even know each other yet. Later
that year they met at a party and discovered they'd had the same
hallucination about ladybugs on a bathroom floor at exactly the
same time on April 1. My dad says the bugs were crawling but my
mom says they were dead. Sometimes when they're telling the story
my dad will compromise and say they were sleeping, but my mom
will wink and mouth the word dead. They named me Ladybug, but
they mostly called me L.B., which though several misunderstandings
early in my education, became Ellie.
awards
• American Library Association's 2003 Best
Books for Young Adults
• 2002 Booklist Editors' Choice
• Booklist's Top 10 First Youth Novels 2002
praise for Better Than Running at Night
"The thing I like most about Hillary Frank's novel
is how adamantly it refuses to deliver easy answers to the character's
problems. It's messy like life. It feels real. I worried for that
girl."
–Ira Glass, host of This American Life
"With honesty, wit, and a wild first-person narrative, this first
novel breaks boundaries in YA fiction in a story about college
freshman Ellie Yelinsky and her search for art, love, sex, and
meaning. ... Frank makes Ellie's intellectual quest just as exciting
as her love life. Ellie learns a lot from her wildly eccentric,
gifted art teacher, who yells about discipline, work, and subtlety.
The laughter and the truth here are in the details, especially
when Frank skewers the pretentiousness of the art scene ("I place
headphones on a tomato and play Bach," one student declaims).
Great monologue material for readers' theatre, this is clearly
for older high-schoolers and college students, who will recognize
the wry self-parody, the insider's raw, wicked take on Generation
Y's coming-of-age."
–Hazel Rochman, Booklist, starred review
"Even kids who scorn Felicity will relish this vision of a life
of exploration outside parental walls."
–The Bulletin
"Using spare language and a dry, witty tone, Hillary Frank
skewers the hypocritical world of art school in this brilliant
debut novel...Intelligent and mature..."
–Jennifer Hubert, Amazon.com
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