Notes from the Teenage Underground

Seventeen-year-old Gem loves movies, her feminist mom, and Dodgy, her coworker in a video store (at least she thinks she loves Dodgy). When a school trip inspires Gem to make an underground film, her best friends Lo and Mira are quick to join the project, taking on the roles of producer and star. The film is intended to cement the girls' friendship as well as their superiority over their sucker high school peers. But when the fragile balance of their friendship begins to falter, and intentions lead to betrayals big and small, it will take great movies, bad haiku, and a pantheon of great voices—from Dostoyevsky to Emerson to The Beatles—to help Gem find the meaning of love, friendship, and being true to herself.

Publishers Weekly

Heathersmeets I Shot Andy Warholin this gritty ode to underground cool by award-winning screenwriter and debut Australian novelist Howell. The story's contagious blend of video store lingo, catty alpha girl politics and a twinge of real heart is both knowingly pretentious and fun. When 17-year-old Gem and her anti-establishment pals, Lo and Mira, form a group called Ug (short for Underground) in order to flaunt and elevate their fringe social standing, there's no doubt that each of their lives is about to change. "To be really Ug means you don't give a fig about the status quo. You can be ugly, or a virgin, or a lesbian, but whatever you are you revel in it." Ug's goal? To shock their cookie-cutter classmates by making a subversive film and airing it at a "Happening," à la Warhol's Factory. When the supposedly united trio's plan backfires (as Mira messes around with Gem's dodgy crush and Lo turns haughty and controlling), Gem decides to create and air a solo project about life as she sees it. Despite the friends' harried break-up, Gem realizes, "It's better to think that we're all different but we're also all people and people have to live together." With references to Valerie Solanas, Edie Sedgwick, Dostoevsky and Germaine Greer, teen misfits and film geeks will devour this renegade read with pleasure. Ages 14-up. (Apr.)

Simmone Howell is an award-winning short story writer, screenwriter, and small press publisher. She won a 2004 AWGIE award (Australia) for her short film 'Pity 24' and has been screened at the London-Australian Film Festival and the Los Angeles Shorts Festival. She lives in Melbourne, Australia with her husband and son.