The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks: Summary and book reviews of The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks by E Lockhart, plus links to an excerpt from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks and a biography of E Lockhart.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
by E Lockhart
Hardcover: Mar 2008,
352 pages.
Paperback: Aug 2009,
352 pages.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 14: Debate Club. Her father's "bunny rabbit." A mildly geeky girl attending a highly competitive boarding school.
Frankie Landau-Banks at age 15: A knockout figure. A sharp tongue. A chip on her shoulder. And a gorgeous new senior boyfriend: the supremely goofy, word-obsessed Matthew Livingston.
Frankie Landau-Banks. No longer the kind of girl to take "no" for an answer. Especially when "no" means she's excluded from her boyfriend's all-male secret society. Not when her ex-boyfriend shows up in the strangest of places. Not when she knows she's smarter than any of them. When she knows Matthew's lying to her. And when there are so many, many pranks to be done.
Frankie Landau-Banks, at age 16: Possibly a criminal mastermind.
Lockhart has a sensitive ear for her characters' young voices; the dialogue is funny and real. Young women will savor this subversive cautionary tale of a girl geek's exhilarating pursuit of power -- sexual, intellectual, and social -- within the retrograde, male-dominated world of an elite boarding school. (Reviewed by Jo Perry).
Booklist
Starred Review. Lockhart creates a unique, indelible character in Frankie, whose oddities only make her more realistic, and teens will be galvanized by her brazen action and her passionate, immediate questions about gender and power, individuals and institutions, and how to fall in love without losing herself.
Kirkus Reviews
Starred Review. Lockhart has transcended the chick-lit genre with this adroit, insightful examination of the eternal adolescent push-pull between meekly fitting in and being liked or speaking out and risking disdain. A funny feminist manifesto that will delight the anti–Gossip Girl gang.
Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Big ideas are an essential part of the fun in this sparkling tour de force
School Library Journal
Starred Review. Lockhart has created a layered and engrossing story that is as smart and quick as Frankie, combining the thrilling prospect of how she will get caught with her earnest attempts to understand what it means to be an outsider, an underdog, and in love. An empowered female hero like Frankie is a rare and refreshing find. She is the ultimate feminist role model for teens: a girl with guts and imagination who’s brave enough to take on the “old boy’s club.
Recent Reader Reviews
Rated of 5
by Amanda Disreputably Good This book is about a girl, Frankie, who is trying to find her place in the world. Everyone sees her, as she explains in the book, their cute, innocent, little “Bunny Rabbit” and so Frankie sets out to prove that she is not “innocent, in need of... Read More
Rated of 5
by lina pal The disreputable history of frankie landau-banks AWESOME BOOK!!! not a five star because it has some stupid or awkward moments but its sooo a four star!!! this book should be #1 book read by teens!!! totally!!!
Invisibility and the Panopticon Adults have neither presence nor influence at Alabaster Prep. If they matter
at all, it's only as offstage dispensers of wealth, tradition or status. Instead
(like its Gothic counterpart Hogwarts), Alabaster's architecture and geography
-- ponds, woods, golf courses, dorms, libraries, and most importantly,
off-limits and secret places -- are powerful historical elements in the novel.
Frankie, once an invisible freshman geek within the school's society, now an
uncomfortably visible sophomore, returns to and exploits invisibility as she
spies on her boyfriend and the school's secret society. As Frankie penetrates
Alabaster's mysteries and exploits that knowledge in the execution of grandiose
pranks, she invisibly controls and subverts the Alabaster community.
It makes sense, then, that the only class to engage Frankie's attention is
"Cities, Art and Protest," in which she contemplates designed communities,
subversive societies and pranks, and Jeremy Bentham's panopticon, a theoretical
prison designed to...
With Lucky, Rachel Vail begins a powerful sisterhood trilogy, comprised of one book for each of the three fascinating Avery sisters, with all their secrets laid bare during the year that completely changes their lives.
Readers will be laughing (and groaning!) out loud all through
this "fabbity-fab-fab" sequel to Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal
Snogging!
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