360 Flip

Molly McGrann's debut novel is a clear-eyed portrait of hopes, dreams and skateboarding in American suburbia. Atomic View was a 1960s fantasy - a vision of the suburban American Dream. Now it is the 1990s. Optimism and aspiration no longer hold sway in a world where days are spent surfing the Internet, spying on neighbours and working out on the Stairmaster. Babo White is a teenager obsessed with his skateboard, lovingly neglected by his distracted, overworked lawyer parents and ignored by his older brother, Mitch. Home from his smart, wealthy Connecticut college, Mitch is trying to figure out how to make it to Manhatten without, crucially, having to do something so mundane as finding himself a job. 360 Flip is centred around Babo and Mitch's family. Molly Mcgrann beautifully captures the surface quietness of the inhabitants of Atomic View, the dreams of those who built it and the tensions which bubble and spit within.


Genre: Literary Fiction

"The book is terrific. I read it in a couple of compulsive gulps, and found [it] vertiginous, tragic and funny." - Jonathan Lethem