{"id":1392,"date":"2018-12-31T17:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-12-31T17:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1392"},"modified":"2018-12-31T17:00:31","modified_gmt":"2018-12-31T17:00:31","slug":"choi-emergency-contact_072918","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/?p=1392","title":{"rendered":"Choi, Emergency Contact_072918"},"content":{"rendered":"
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YA FICTION\/ROMANTIC COMEDY<\/p>\n

Mary H. K. Choi<\/span><\/p>\n

Emergency Contact<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers<\/p>\n

Hardcover, 978-1-5344-0896-8 (also available as an e-book and audio-book), 400 pgs., $17.99<\/p>\n

March 27, 2018<\/p>\n

Penny is eighteen, beginning her freshman year at UT Austin. <\/span>She\u2019s funny, smart, and curious (in both senses of that word). She\u2019s an anxious introvert who \u201cwould rather eat a pound of hair than reveal her true emotions,\u201d highly organized, and a bit of a germaphobe. Penny, \u201cliving in books until the exciting part of her life could begin,\u201d can\u2019t wait to get away from her mother and her hometown boyfriend and begin her life as a science-fiction writer.<\/p>\n

Sam is twenty-one with \u201cirresponsible hair,\u201d managing the Coffee House where he\u2019s famous for his mad baking skills. He wants to be a documentary filmmaker but had to drop out of college because he couldn\u2019t afford it. A bit adrift, Sam is lonely, lives on a mattress upstairs at the coffee shop, trying to remain sober in the face of despair and \u201cgutted\u201d by a broken heart. Penny discovers Sam as he\u2019s in the middle of a panic attack on 6th Street (\u201ca Disneyland Main Street for day drinkers\u201d), and they exchange phone numbers in case of emergency.<\/p>\n

Emergency Contact<\/span> is the first novel from Mary H. K. Choi<\/span>, who grew up in Hong Kong and Texas. Choi writes for the New York Times, GQ, Wired<\/span>, and Atlantic.<\/span> She has also written comics for DC and Marvel and published a collection of essays called Oh, Never Mind.<\/span> Choi hosts the \u201cHey, Cool Job!\u201d podcast and is a correspondent for HBO\u2019s \u201cVICE News Tonight.\u201d Emergency Contact<\/span> is a compulsively readable debut\u2014tender and awkward, sweet and sad, and lol funny.<\/p>\n

This fast-paced story is told through the alternating third-person narrations of Penny and Sam, two compelling, complex, flawed characters with satisfyingly detailed backstories. Choi employs an evocative economy of words. She dives into devices and social media, arguing that the generation coming of age now is not emotionally stunted, even if they do use emojis\u2014emotional shorthand. Penny and Sam are sharing themselves in what they consider to be a safe space, even if that space is an iPhone. \u201cThey could get to know each other completely and get comfortable,\u201d Penny thinks, \u201cbefore they had to do anything unnecessarily overwhelming like look at each other\u2019s eyeballs with their eyeballs.\u201d The dialogue flows smoothly, even when things are, like, so awk.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ask you about a personal trauma and you tell me about the catering?\u201d<\/p>\n

Penny nodded.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re bad at this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penny nodded again.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou need therapy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Penny nodded a third time.<\/p>\n

\u201cAre you sad?\u201d<\/p>\n

She was.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know you can tell me anything,\u201d said Jude.<\/p>\n

Penny regarded her roommate\u2019s big sorrowful eyes and knew it to be true.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m going to hug you now,\u201d Jude warned.<\/p>\n

I spent a good deal of time lying about and smiling while reading Emergency Contact, forgetting to take notes. Penny and Sam are workshopping life, and I\u2019ve become so fond of them that I wish I could check in on them to see how they\u2019re doing. They tug at our heartstrings, unravel them, then tie the loose ends into knots. The untangling is fraught, delicate work. Choi pulls no punches and her topics include but are not limited to: absent fathers; disappointing, damaged, single mothers; sexual assault; unintended pregnancy; substance addiction; depression; and the slow suicide by poison that happens when anger is nurtured.<\/p>\n

Emergency Contact is beautiful inside and out, all pink and black and rose gold. Penny and Sam inspire and comfort each other, feeling their way to a rapprochement with adulting one mistake at a time, in search of their person and their tribe.<\/p>\n

* * * * *<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

YA FICTION\/ROMANTIC COMEDY Mary H. K. Choi Emergency Contact Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers Hardcover, 978-1-5344-0896-8 (also available as an e-book and audio-book), 400 pgs., $17.99 March 27, 2018 Penny is eighteen, beginning her freshman year at UT Austin. She\u2019s funny, smart, and curious (in both senses of that word). She\u2019s an anxious […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.etypegoogle10.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}