Linn Parker

Ameritrash Linn Parker

'Joan of Arc burned here and Madame Bovary was bored here, and this was the place that was to be my home for the rest of the year. I hoped I would be neither burned nor bored, ' writes Siobhan Schreiber. It's the start of the 90s; acid house and raves are all the rage, and ecstasy is the drug du jour. When Siobhan Schreiber and her fellow New England University students, Lindi, Mike, Gabriela, and Mimi, descend on France for a year to hone their language skills, they also end up getting an education in things they won't be writing home about. Siobhan promises her possessive boyfriend, Toby, that she thinks about him every day; until she is seduced by the charms of Europe in the form of Bruno Calibri, an extroverted Italian, who explodes into her life and takes her on a whirlwind motorcycle ride around Europe. When Toby comes to France to visit, and finds out about Bruno, all hell breaks loose and he spirals into self-destructiveness, literally leaving Siobhan to clean up the mess. Meanwhile, the others are dealing with problems of their own in the form of unwanted attention, unwanted pregnancy, compromising situations and even war. Set free from their American middle-class safety-net, the friends intend to exploit Europe to the fullest on a student budget, sleeping in train stations or overnight trains, and hitchhiking. Happy go lucky until she becomes the victim of a predator, Siobhan must then come to terms with what has happened and begins to reassess her life. Ameritrash is the story of Siobhan and her friends' initiations into the realities of adulthood, which turn out to be not as romantic as expected. It is a humorous and candid novel that evokes the chaos, desperation and spontaneity of being young, reckless and in a foreign country.