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Summary
Summary
From National Book Award winner Pete Hautman, the story of a girl who acts out by stealing cars.
Some girls act out by drinking or doing drugs. Some girls act out by sleeping with guys. Some girls act out by starving themselves or cutting themselves. Some girls act out by being a bitch to other girls.
Not Kelleigh. Kelleigh steals cars.
In How to Steal a Car, National Book Award winner Pete Hautman takes teen readers on a thrilling, scary ride through one suburban girl's turbulent life - one car theft at a time.
Author Notes
Pete Hautman won the National Book Award for his novel Godless. He is also the author of the acclaimed novels The Big Crunch, How to Steal a Car, Rash, Invisible, Sweetblood, Hole in the Sky, No Limit, and Mr. Was. His home in the world is Minnesota, and his home on the web is www.petehautman.com.
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Gr 7 Up-It's summertime in the Minneapolis suburbs, and 15-year-old Kelleigh doesn't smoke, drink (except a few times), do drugs, or do anything bad, really, except steal cars. Her career starts innocently at the mall when she sees a guy drop his keys in the parking lot. Kelleigh keeps them as a "souvenir" and soon discovers that the owner lives near her. One evening, she and her friend Jen take his Altima for a joyride. As the jam-packed plot unfolds, Kelleigh deals with unresolved issues regarding her best friends, Jen and Will; her lawyer father's adultery and decision to defend a known rapist; and her mother's use of alcohol and cigarettes to cope. She manages life by continuing to steal cars. Hautman packs a dense plot into this slim title and intermingles Kelleigh's story with two summer homework assignments: a reading of Moby-Dick and a "How-to" essay, for which the teen chooses the topic of stealing cars. Hautman's characters start off simple and likable, and Kelleigh has just enough sarcasm and teen angst to be endearing. However, as the story unfolds, the characters become inherently flawed with real human problems and vulnerabilities, and Kelleigh becomes an empty, judgmental girl who seeks to fill her life's voids with cheap thrills. Through her actions, the author allows readers to evaluate the protagonist's life and choices.-Adrienne L. Strock, Maricopa County Library District, AZ (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
Kelleigh Monahan, an atypically underprogrammed American teen, has just two assignments before the start of sophomore year: read Moby-Dick and write a "how to" essay of "acceptable quality." She hangs at the mall with her best friend, Jen, and occasionally with their co-boyfriend, Will. Like a person who picks a fight in order to feel some emotion, Kelleigh starts stealing cars, first as a lark but quickly escalating to truly risky business. Kelleigh has no remorse; her introspection extends mostly to how her crimes compare to her lawyer father's use of a technicality to win the release of a serial rapist. "Who's the real criminal here?" Hautman (Godless) seems to be asking. Kelleigh is a sharp observer, especially of her parents' strained marriage, and she has an appealing wisecracker's wit: "Once you're a teenager, adults stop talking about the crazy stuff they used to do, and they start acting as if they were raised by the Amish." Her worldview, however, remains bleak, as this what-I-did-last-summer story concludes: "Sooner or later everybody turns out to be a disappointment." Ages 13-up. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Horn Book Review
(High School) In this joyride of a novel, suburban Minneapolis teen Kelleigh Monahan chooses a unique subject for her extra-credit five-hundred-word essay: how to steal a car. Even more unique is that she's writing from personal experience. Hautman's charismatic first-person narrator recounts a convincing tale of a good girl stumbling upon her wild streak. Impulsively pocketing a stranger's lost keys at the mall leads to the first escapade, an after-midnight spin in a Nissan Altima. She doesn't get caught but imagines trying to explain her motivation to her lawyer father if she had. "The thing that he would never understand was that it only had to make sense for about one decision-making nanosecond. Later it might seem moronic, but at the time it all made perfect sense." Subtly drawn supporting characters, including "nearly perfect" parents who start to exhibit cracks in their veneers, give Kelleigh's story texture; and the suspense rises with each heist. How does practically the last person anyone would suspect to be a "booster" (slang for car thief) end up playing a role in an organized car stealing ring? Kelleigh's best explanation comes when she's pointing out the similarities between excitement and fear. "Think roller coaster. Think first kiss. Think stealing a car." From HORN BOOK, (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Hautman channels the cynically smart voice of a teenage sometime car thief in this sly cross between Blake Nelson's The New Rules of High School (2003) and Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You (2007). Fifteen-year-old Kelleigh is bored. Her staid parents politely leave her alone, her two best friends talk about the same old things and she's stuck with Moby-Dick for her summer-reading selection. So she begins stealing cars, quickly escalating from joy riding in her elderly neighbors' Caddy to plotting the theft of a stranger's Mercedes. Teens will identify with Kelleigh's challenges to boundaries and attempts to see how many rules she can break before anyone in authority can be bothered to notice. Kelleigh soon decides that while "I stole a couple carsIt's not who I am." However, the illegal thrill causes her to realize she has outgrown her suburbanTwin Cities world, and an unrepentant ending behind stolen wheels suggests she is destined to leave it behind. A sharply observed, subversive coming-of-age tale. (Fiction. 13 up) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Fifteen-year-old Kelleigh is not the kind of girl who steals cars. But when a set of keys almost literally falls into her lap, she takes a stranger's Nissan for a spin. Before long, she finds an excuse to do it again. Soon she has allied herself with a teen car thief who needs a new partner. Kelleigh's behavior defies logic, even to her; as she says after the first theft, it only had to make sense for about one decision-making nanosecond. Using short, nonlinear chapters, Hautman introduces numerous elements: a maybe-gay boyfriend, a drinking mother, a philandering defense-attorney father. Yet not only does Hautman maintain total control, he also draws subtle parallels between the subplots does Dad's effort to get a rapist off on a technicality make him any better than his daughter who boosts cars? This tight, slim book is a moral brier patch that might leave some grasping for purpose, but most will identify with Kelleigh's urge to break through life's suffocating safeguards.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2009 Booklist