Synopses & Reviews
"Is it true that I'm just a big phony who doesn't notice anybody but herself, and wants life to be like TV, with everybody watching, and everything all beautiful and glittery? No. If that were true, this book would only have the good parts, not the parts where people are calling me a jerk." Triumph. Tears. Health & Beauty Tips. You'll find all this and more, in the story of Tiffany's life so far. Prepare to laugh aloud -- again and again!
Review
School Library Journal A real send-up of a California cool blonde, Tiffany vapidly videotapes a journal in attempt to fulfill an English assignment. . . . The Cannibals is a hoot. Grant {illegible} lots of different social agendas. While the tone is quite the opposite of her Mary Wolf (Atheneum, 1995), many of the same social issues can be discussed. This one will be wildly popular. Booklist Grant spoofs high school, talk shows, teen movies, and just about everything in this delightfully screwball comedy. Publishers Weekly Grant takes a breather from her sobering YA fiction to serve up a trenchant satire. Set a decade or two in the future, the story is breathlessly narrated by headstrong 17-year-old Tiffany Spratt, who is videotaping her journal for a school assignment and for posterity, because she is certain she'll be famous. Right away she falls for a handsome new student whose name, Campbell, she mistakes for Cannibal, which she instantly decides to call her clique at Hiram Johnson High ("They should make a show about our school," she enthuses. "They could call it Hi High and it would be all about me and The Girls and our exciting adventures as cheerleaders, and Cannibal could play my boyfriend... and [my boyfriend] Wally will just have to get used to it"). Tiffany's attempts to lure the ultra cool, highly principled Campbell into a "real" kiss run alongside her campaign to persuade the school board to allow a teen vampire film to be shot at her school she just knows it will be her big break. Grant points the finger at all sorts of "cannibals" in a culture of consumption, from commercial sponsors of school equipment to the totally outré (e.g., the Jerry Springer-style talk show host is a former U.S. president) as she keeps Tiffany's slyly skewed platitudes flowing ("I know what it's like to feel hopeless... but every cloud has a silver lining, and it's always darkest before the storm"). A solid comedy with bite.
About the Author
Cynthia D. Grant is the award-winning author of
Mary Wolf and T
he White Horse She lives in the mountains outside Cloverdale, California.