Dora: A Headcase
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4.6 • 16 Ratings
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- $15.99
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- $15.99
Publisher Description
Dora: A Headcase is a contemporary coming-of-age story based on Freud’s famous case study—retold and revamped through Dora's point of view, with shotgun blasts of dark humor and sexual play.
Ida needs a shrink . . . or so her philandering father thinks, and he sends her to a Seattle psychiatrist. Immediately wise to the head games of her new shrink, whom she nicknames Siggy, Ida begins a coming-of-age journey. At the beginning of her therapy, Ida, whose alter ego is Dora, and her small posse of pals engage in "art attacks." Ida’s in love with her friend Obsidian, but when she gets close to intimacy, she faints or loses her voice. Ida and her friends hatch a plan to secretly film Siggy and make an experimental art film. But something goes wrong at a crucial moment—at a nearby hospital Ida finds her father suffering a heart attack. While Ida loses her voice, a rough cut of her experimental film has gone viral, and unethical media agents are hunting her down. A chase ensues in which everyone wants what Ida has.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In Yuknavitch's audacious first novel, equal parts acid-tongued coming-of-age story and feminist retelling of Freud's most famous case study, Seattle teen Ida goes toe-to-toe with her new shrink, nicknamed Siggy, recording their conversations (among other things) with the recorder she's hidden in her Dora the Explorer purse. At home, her father is having an affair with Mrs. K. (Mr. K., true to Freud's model, propositioned Ida when she was 14) and her mother is drinking herself into oblivion. In therapy, mandated by her father, Ida, nimble as a boxer, counters Siggy every time he brings up his favorite topic: sex. Sex is the one thing that Ida hasn't experienced yet, though she's desperately in love with her friend, Obsidian, but whenever the girls go beyond kissing, Ida either faints or loses her voice (cue Freud again). Along with Obsidian, Ida and the rest of her posse stage "art attacks" around the city, culminating in their most daring one yet following a recorded conversation between Siggy and a mysterious man with unforeseen consequences. Yuknavitch (the memoir The Chronology of Water) nails the whip-smart angst of a teenage girl trapped in a world both familiar and unique, and her ease with language makes her a prose stylist to envy.
Customer Reviews
Original and Powerful
The novel immerses you into the provocative and engrossing world of a troubled youth through truly original story telling. It's a universal story so don't worry if you're not a teen these days--if you're alive you can relate. Brilliantly written and more importantly full of soul, it'll take you on a wild and unpredictable ride.
Amazing book!!
I couldn't put it down and loved the way it was written, the idea of the book as a whole, and the way it touched upon serious facets of growing up as a teenage girl in todays society in such a detailed and accurate way.
Dora: a Headcase
I'm the kind of person Dora despised - old & creaky. Most of my generation would despise Dora. But reading Dora's story made me long for the turbulent years of teenage angst all over again. The author's writing style is amazing. Crude & lewd, yet lovely and honest.