Dora: A Headcase

FROM THE AUTHOR OF THE CHRONOLOGY OF WATER The female Fight Club With shotgun blasts of playful dark humor, this ballsy coming-of-age story is based on Freud's famous case study, but retold and revamped through our young protagonist's point of view

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 therapist, who she nicknames Siggy or Sig, 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--Little Teena, Ave Maria, and Obsidian-engage in what they call "art attacks" for teen fun and mayhem.

But Ida has a secret: she is in love with Obsidian. What's more, whenever she gets close to intimacy or a crisis of deep emotions, Ida faints or loses her voice. Ida and her friends hatch a plan to secretly record and film Siggy, and Ida intends to make an experimental art film as a tribute. As Sig becomes the target of her teen rage and angst, something goes terribly wrong at a crucial moment--Ida's father suffers an acute heart attack. Her voice lost, a rough cut of her experimental film goes underground viral and unethical media agents are trying to hunt her down to buy the material. Suddenly, everyone wants what Ida's got--but she's not willing to give it up so easily.