This Will Go Down on Your Permanent Record
Susannah Felts
Featherproof Books
ISBN: 978-0-977-19924-2

I think I set a record with a review of this book. I received it on a Thursday and read it in one sitting on Friday. This is a very good book and a story that I think anyone who ever felt like a misfit, which I think is everyone, will see themselves in.

Set in the late 80s, the story is about Vaughn Vance a sixteen year old girl from Nashville who dumps her pretentious friends right before summer begins. Now friendless, she starts to hang out in Dragon Park a run down park in the city that has now become a hangout for kids to drink and smoke.

She begins to get into photography which really takes off when she starts hanging out with the Sophie, the troubled, but cooler girl across the street and finds her muse.

I hate to use the phrase "coming of age novel", because it has become such a cliche' and this book isn't a cliche', but it is the perfect phrase for this book. Susannah Felts does a great job of creating the characters in this book. Told from the first person of Vaughn, she presents that inner dialogue of doubt that most of us have when we are teens. Vaughn is constantly worried she is not acting cool enough, saying too much, too little or the wrong thing. She also does a great job as Vaughn grows as the novel moves on of subtly adjusting Vaughn's tone.

Frankly a great job is done developing all the characters and places in this book. Even the minor characters, the college boys next door, the other kids at Dragon Park seem real, like people you really know or knew. When I looked up images of Dragon Park online, it was exactly as I had imagined it from reading the book, that tells you something about the way that Felts is able to draw in your mind using the written word.

If there is one complaint about the book, it is that after the eventual falling out between Sophie and Vaughn, which I will let you read about, I don't want to reveal too much here, the book meanders a bit.

Overall, I really liked this book. As I said, the characters and the place seemed real to me. I defiantly will keep an eye out for more by Susannah Felts, after this debut it is obvious that she has a great future as a writer.