Katzenjammer
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Overview
"An eerie, savage novel." --Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
American Horror Story meets the dark comedy of Kafka's The Metamorphosis as Cat searches for a way to escape her high school. A tale of family, love, tragedy, and masks--the ones others make for us, and the ones we make for ourselves. Katzenjammer will haunt fans of Chelsea Pitcher's This Lie Will Kill You and E. Lockhart's We Were Liars.
Cat lives in her high school. She never leaves, and for a long time her school has provided her with everything she needs. But now things are changing. The hallways contract and expand along with the school's breathing, and the showers in the bathroom run a bloody red. Cat's best friend is slowly turning into cardboard, and instead of a face, Cat has a cat mask made of her own hardened flesh.
Cat doesn't remember why she is trapped in her school or why half of them--Cat included--are slowly transforming. Escaping has always been the one impossibility in her school's upside-down world. But to save herself from the eventual self-destruction all the students face, Cat must find the way out. And to do that, she'll have to remember what put her there in the first place.
Using chapters alternating between the past and the present, acclaimed author Francesca Zappia weaves a spine-tingling, suspenseful, and haunting story about tragedy and the power of memories. Fans of Marieke Nijkamp's This Is Where It Ends and Karen McManus's One of Us Is Lying will lose themselves in the pages of this novel--or maybe in the treacherous hallways of the school.
Includes interior illustrations from the author.
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Details
- ISBN-13: 9780063161658
- ISBN-10: 0063161656
- Publisher: Greenwillow Books
- Publish Date: June 2022
- Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
- Page Count: 304
- Reading Level: Ages 14-UP
Related Categories
In her fourth novel, Katzenjammer, author Francesca Zappia crafts a surreal and frightening world that parallels the innate horrors of high school. This story of subversion and sleight-of-hand trickery is difficult to discuss—or forget.
Cat and her classmates live at School. They don't know why. No one can remember when School's doors and windows went away. Cat has lost her face, her eyes and even her real name. The class president is a life-size porcelain doll; Cat's best friend, Jeffrey, has a cardboard box for a head. Some students wander the constricting halls, alone and unmoored, while a few others rule over private domains in School's underbelly.
The tenuous equilibrium between School and its students is broken when the class president is found brutalized in the courtyard. More broken bodies follow, and the students' fear grows. Someone—or something—is killing them, and they can feel the clock beginning to tick. As Cat desperately searches her memories for answers, she circles around truths that are too unbearable to look at directly. But to find the way out of School, Cat must face the thing waiting in the shadows of her mind.
Katzenjammer is a postmodern nightmare, a David Lynchian spiral of terror. Absurdist body horror mingles with slasher-film suspense, and the consistent suspension of reality gives the novel a disorienting, dreamlike quality. Yet Katzenjammer's potency is undeniable. Cat's memories are frequently as disturbing as her new reality. "We all take from each other. We take and take and take," Cat says of her peers. It's a cynical view of adolescence, but it will strike true for many teens. Zappia makes no effort to shroud her novel's darkness. Visceral, bloody and cruel, it almost dares the reader to look away.
Katzenjammer is not a book for every reader, and Zappia includes a series of content warnings on the book's copyright page: "School bullying and violence, mention of eating disorders, and scenes of gore, blood, and death." Although she's not the first YA author to depict school violence and its aftermath, she writes brutality with a frankness that's virtually unmatched. Teens so often go ignored by their parents, their teachers and people in positions of power. What Katzenjammer ultimately offers its teen readers is the feeling, finally, of being heard.
In her fourth novel, Katzenjammer, author Francesca Zappia crafts a surreal and frightening world that parallels the innate horrors of high school. This story of subversion and sleight-of-hand trickery is difficult to discuss—or forget.
Cat and her classmates live at School. They don't know why. No one can remember when School's doors and windows went away. Cat has lost her face, her eyes and even her real name. The class president is a life-size porcelain doll; Cat's best friend, Jeffrey, has a cardboard box for a head. Some students wander the constricting halls, alone and unmoored, while a few others rule over private domains in School's underbelly.
The tenuous equilibrium between School and its students is broken when the class president is found brutalized in the courtyard. More broken bodies follow, and the students' fear grows. Someone—or something—is killing them, and they can feel the clock beginning to tick. As Cat desperately searches her memories for answers, she circles around truths that are too unbearable to look at directly. But to find the way out of School, Cat must face the thing waiting in the shadows of her mind.
Katzenjammer is a postmodern nightmare, a David Lynchian spiral of terror. Absurdist body horror mingles with slasher-film suspense, and the consistent suspension of reality gives the novel a disorienting, dreamlike quality. Yet Katzenjammer's potency is undeniable. Cat's memories are frequently as disturbing as her new reality. "We all take from each other. We take and take and take," Cat says of her peers. It's a cynical view of adolescence, but it will strike true for many teens. Zappia makes no effort to shroud her novel's darkness. Visceral, bloody and cruel, it almost dares the reader to look away.
Katzenjammer is not a book for every reader, and Zappia includes a series of content warnings on the book's copyright page: "School bullying and violence, mention of eating disorders, and scenes of gore, blood, and death." Although she's not the first YA author to depict school violence and its aftermath, she writes brutality with a frankness that's virtually unmatched. Teens so often go ignored by their parents, their teachers and people in positions of power. What Katzenjammer ultimately offers its teen readers is the feeling, finally, of being heard.