The Trouble With Marlene and Film Studies — Billie Livingston

"The tightly paced, free-flowing stories in Single Voice deliver blow after powerful blow with unflinching honesty, original plots, and startling twists. Presented in flip-book format, each book contains two stories told by teenagers at crucial moments. The stories explode with the urgency, drama, and confusion of adolescence.
In Film Studies, 15-year-old Cass is so cool she s cold. That s what people think. But she struggles to decide what role to play in life an act that swallows her whole. It s her director father, long absent, who leaves her struggling for an identity. The one thing she knows for sure is that she s fed up with her mother s ever-changing boyfriends. Then along comes a school film project and things get strange. But so what if the boy she likes films her twirling around half naked? Her father makes porn, doesn t he? If you act like Marlene, you end up like Marlene messed up, lonely and broke. No wonder Samantha rejects her mother s lifestyle.
In The Trouble with Marlene, mother and daughter share one thing thoughts of suicide. Marlene never stops talking about it, but for Samantha, it s a private affair. There s one other private thought for Samantha: putting a pillow over her mother s face and bringing the madness to an end. How far is she prepared to take her fantasy?"
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