Glow 

Kae Denino

Synopsis:  Can "exuberant" and "charming" be used in the same sentence? Only if you’re talking about Kae Denino’s Glow. Pull up a chair at your favorite coffee shop and bump along with this Italian-American heroine.

    Lulu has been transposed from a solid Midwest town to an Arizona University where party rules as the number one major. She’s just learned that her boyfriend deals drugs. She’s just learned that her father has lost his high-powered recording industry job. She’s just learned that her grandmother has died. Her twenty-something, thirty-something African-American roommate is partying so hard that she’s looking fifty-something. And now Lulu’s lost her passport and is stranded in England at the end of a trip that was meant to help her sort out her life. Frick-a-frack. What Lulu needs is a double espresso to calm her down…

Kae Denino grew up in Ohio. She graduated from Arizona State University, received her master's from New York University, and presently works in New York City. This is her first novel.

Chapter One.
As Lulu is Detained in England and Cannot
Return to the United States, Since She Has
Misplaced Her Passport.
or
Why Cap’n Crunch is a Bad Breakfast Date

England, 5 August 1998

    My grandma says we live and die by our choices. Yet sometimes there is a slipping in the cracks: the goldfish in the heels of our platforms all swim to one side and we fall, laughing but not really.

    “You poor little princess!” you gasp. Stuck in Europa. This is the most tragically hip story you’ve ever read, such drama, passion, victimization. Start a support group, stick  a jar in 7-Eleven with her face on it, so people will feel sorry for her, guilty while they steal from it for change. “HA!” you taunt, “Go be cultured! Puff a ciggie, drink coffee in a thimble-sized cup with the fury of Cuban missiles, cry over the beauty of ancient architecture.”

     Frick a frack. I WANT A BIG MAC AND I WANT IT NOW and I want it served from the McDonald’s at 4th St. and the Avenue of the Americas in Manhattan, where they serve the food (and beverage selections) upside down and when you say, “Why did you serve my food upside down?” the brat behind the counter says, “Because that’s how I serve food when I’m on CRACK.” That’s what Great Britain needs, a little more crack.

     Going through pockets, backpack, couch cushions. It’s official. Not only do I not own a passport, I also lack moola for espresso and my brain is frizz, frizz, frizz. It’s the fucking Olympics and I fucking forgot my fucking skis. No more English cash, no more American. I’m out, down for the count, he loves me he loves me snot, slouched on a crimson couch in this damn airport coffeehouse dead as a ducking doornail, WISHING TO BECOME NEWSPRINT.

       Oh, set the scene. My little creative writing class that has been in the U.K. all summer is boarding the plane to America. I lost my passport in a pub last night, and this shouldn’t matter because I LOVE AMERICA, and I don’t care if I ever leave ever again. Airport gents line both sides:

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