A famous author once said, "Characters to me, the ones I write, aren't persuasive till I can postulate what they do for a living." In her full-length debut, Monica Drake postulates into life a young woman named Nita, otherwise known as Sniffles, a freelance clown. Talk about vocation defining a character. When we meet her, Sniffles is tying balloons for kids downtown. But the summer heat (and a decided lack of nutrition) gets the best of her. She faints. Enter a cop, a rubber chicken, and Rex Galore, who ran off to clown college not long after Sniffles became pregnant with his child. Now meet Matey and Crack, Herman and Nadia-Italia. Step inside the world of
Clown Girl, one of the most original and promising first novels to come out of Portland in ages.