COMEDY GIRL

Goofy 17-year-old drama queen and comedienne Trixie Shapiro unexpectedly wins a contest at a local Chicago club and immediately is whisked into the stand-up scene. Hired temporarily as the club’s emcee, Trixie discovers that juggling her new job with schoolwork, family, and a recently acquired hipster boyfriend isn’t as easy as she expected. Her amusingly sappy schoolgirl dream sequences provide a much-needed boost to this otherwise predictable Jacqueline-Susann-rise-to-fame story. Unfortunately, Schreiber colors Trixie’s characterization with a tiresome, obvious cache of jokes that unfortunately renders more groans than laughs. To her credit, however, Schreiber has dropped her exhaustive habit of ending every paragraph with an exclamation point, making her prose more proactive than hyperactive. And Trixie’s sense of humor truly sparkles when Schreiber isn’t forcing her to be outwardly funny, but instead subtly allows the humor to bubble to the surface in the guise of a teenaged girl’s everyday confusions and pressures. Frenetically flaky and mildly humorous, this definitely has teen appeal potential even though librarians may find it wearisome. (Fiction. 12-15)