Ready, Okay!

By Adam Cadre

An unforgettable debut novel about the lives of a group of alienated teenagers in suburban California that Introduces a startling new voice in fiction. Meet Allen Mockery: "The day I turned sixteen years old I had no idea that in four months nearly everyone I cared about would be dead. Unburdened by this foreknowledge, it was with a free and unclouded spirit that I went down to the DMV and failed my driving test." So begins Adam Cadre's captivating, darkly comic story of teenage life in America in the new millennium, fold through the lives of Allen and a parade of friends and foes, each more vivid and memorable than the last: Peggy: "You can hit it off with all kinds of people, but once you've shared a counterespionage run with someone, well, that's the kind of bond that goes deeper than sharing your math notes." Siren: "They asked us what our career plans were and Siren said she was going to be a Laker Girl. Then we fed these milelong Scantrons into a computer and it said that the career that she was actually best suited for was Laker Girl." Echo: "Her eyes could bore a hole in you the size of a chicken pot pie and she always dressed entirely in black, which is pretty lame but certainly impresses the hell out of most fifteen-year-olds." Molly: "She had her own heater to make sure her room stayed a toasty eighty-four degrees. This probably would've been uncomfortably hot if not for the fact that Molly refused to wear any clothing whatsoever." These are just a few of the people you'll meet watching Allen and friends fry to shepherd one another through a minefield of violence, drugs, and parental abandonment as their story careens to its gripping ending. Adam Cadre has created a heartfelt, original novel that offers a new way of looking at the perennial struggles of teenagers. Ready, Okay is just the right novel at the right time powerful and entertaining story that an entire generation of readers can embrace and call its own.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060195584
• ISBN13: 9780060195588
• Release Date: July 2000
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 1.3" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Wow!

One of my friends told my without any forespeak that I had to read this book. It took me a while to get started, and I almost put it down after the first chapter, but since I had nothing else to do I kept reading. I kept reading untill my mother came in and turned off my light. Over the past two days I have been reading this book, and it feels as though my life has been secondary to what is happening to these characters. This is story is reviting. Maybe at first it seems like a boring teenage Catcher in the Rye-ish, but there is a plot. A very, very powerful one behind it. Anyone who is bored with this book, keep reading. It will not stay boring for long. I would recomend this book only to an open-minded person. There is swearing, drinking, drugs, sex, and any who can't take that in here should not read this book. I am so glad I read this book, and I think many other people will be too. It is one of those books you experience, and not read.

A disturbing and superbly crafted tale

Brimming with ideas, Ready, Okay! is both a terrific read and a thought-provoking story--Adam Cadre's first novel is well worth checking out.Allen Mockery, the protagonist and narrator, maneuvers through an increasingly surreal Southern California teenagerhood that becomes nightmarish as the novel progresses. Allen styles himself a "deeg," short for "goodygood," unimplicated in the self-destructive lifestyles going on around him. It's that lack of participation that lets him observe the novel's various goings-on, and he maintains his ironic distance throughout; he meets tragedy and absurdity with the same self-aware flippancy. It's a flippancy that's not there simply to amuse, though. Allen's reluctance to take anything seriously seems to serve as a defense against the traumas he confronts. It's also a distancing mechanism of sorts: Allen's running commentary masks the extent to which he sees himself in the sordidness around him, "deeg" persona aside. One of the novel's main conflicts is between the "deegs" and the fallen, so to speak; the two worlds clash at various points, and there are some crossovers. (Cadre repeatedly uses that conflict to show the extent to which apparently similar people can live in entirely different worlds.) The same conflict also provides much of the novel's humor; the contrasts between the anything-goes set and the straitlaced folks set up some amusing one-liners.The characters, in a few instances, seem more like types than people on first glance, but there's much more there than first appears. It's not so much that apparently loathsome characters disclose redeeming qualities--if anything, they turn out to be more loathsome, but they're loathsome in interesting ways. Similarly, some of the apparently virtuous characters have internal conflicts that ensure that there's more to the characters than caricature. Still, the most intriguing character is Allen himself, in that, for all his ironic judgment, he seems to retain a sense of complicity in the tragedies around him. In other words, Allen (but hardly anyone else) learns to wonder what he can do to save his fellow teens, and to lament not doing more when one of them falls.Ready, Okay! is not for the faint of heart, or (occasionally) stomach--cruelty and squalor are prevalent, and much of the narrative involves benevolence getting either outwitted or simply overwhelmed (or, in a few cases, turning out to be something other than benevolence). The stark contrasts that the novel draws between virtue and degradation also produce some memorable images, though (maybe *too* memorable) and suggest that the real story is more about the forces that influence and prey on the characters than about the characters themselves. Certainly, there's a lingering sense that the characters who populate Ready, Okay! are at the mercy of, rather than in control of, their social world.The writing is outstanding; Cadre effectively mixes grimness and pathos with humor. The structure of the story is

Surreal Realism

This was one of the best books I've read ever read. I myself am a High School student, though not a typical one. I was completely able to believe in the potential reality of all of the characters, and enjoyed its simultaneous realism and surreality, and its simultaneous intense dark subject matter and dark comedy and levity. The combination of diametrically opposed subjects, intense plot and well-developed characters dragged me all the way through the book. Although the book was quite depressing, afterwards I am quite glad I read it. I have also read some of Adam Cadre's short stories and am quite impressed with his writing abilities and style.Five out of five stars, two thumbs up, for me anyway. This book is definitely not for everyone. Unfortunately, the only way to tell if it's for YOU or not is to read it. Read it, if you feel ready to vomit by chapter 5, the book is not for you. If you reach chapter 8 or 9 before this reaction occurs, hold out the rest of the way. It's an enlightening experience.

Emotional Roller Coaster that's Ultimately Satisfying

I pretty much couldn't put this book down after the second chapter, as the foreshadowing of an ensuing disaster sprinkled in between some beautifully drawn out, pop-culture-inspired character sketches, took a firm grasp on every spare moment I had in the day.The picture, for a good part of the book, is very bleak with a landscape so raw and uncaring that by the second day of reading I found myself getting depressed. But, the ending was powerful enough (it didn't restore my faith in humankind mind you, but it did restore my faith in the humanity of the protagonist and one or two other characters) and the prose and witty retorts were so much fun to read, that it made the disturbing reality of the protagonist's world a minor footnote in the lasting impressions I'll have from this book.Maybe the only criticism I really have is that most of the characters were a little too polished when it came to their dialogue. Is it believable that a group of 4 related child prodigies can speak and think at a PhD level? Sure, I guess. But when 50% of the supporting cast start quoting poets long since dead or start making insights into the human psyche that rival Freud's, you have to wonder if maybe the author's voice isn't coming through where it shouldn't.Still, that's a really small gripe. As I'd alluded to earlier, the prose is ASTOUNDING. Where does Mr. Cadre get all his witty references and material from? Every page in this book brings a new joke or comeback that lulls the reader into a comfortable routine so that when the disturbing bits eventually do occur, the effect is particularly jarring.Apparently, it took Mr. Cadre 40% of his life to write this book. Here's hoping it won't take quite so long for him to finish his next one.

A Journey Well Worth Taking

I don't normally read modern fiction -- I'm more of a fantasy / science fiction fan. However, this book was recommended to me by more than one friend, and I just had to get it to see what it was all about.I found the writing, for the first few sub-chapters, to be a bit uneven. But it may have been that I needed to get primed on Mr Cadre's style because, after that, the story reached into my skull, grabbed onto my brain, and wouldn't let go until I finished.I had originally thought I would have to force myself to read this book, given the genre, but the book is too good for that. Cadre really knows how to write, and he really knows how to make characters that come alive. I look forward to his next work.