The Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Lindsey Lee Johnson, 2017
Random House
288 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780812997279
Summary
An unforgettable cast of characters is unleashed into a realm known for its cruelty—the American high school—in this captivating debut novel.
The wealthy enclaves north of San Francisco are not the paradise they appear to be, and nobody knows this better than the students of a local high school.
Despite being raised with all the opportunities money can buy, these vulnerable kids are navigating a treacherous adolescence in which every action, every rumor, every feeling, is potentially postable, shareable, viral.
Lindsey Lee Johnson’s kaleidoscopic narrative exposes at every turn the real human beings beneath the high school stereotypes. Abigail Cress is ticking off the boxes toward the Ivy League when she makes the first impulsive decision of her life: entering into an inappropriate relationship with a teacher.
Dave Chu, who knows himself at heart to be a typical B student, takes desperate measures to live up to his parents’ crushing expectations.
Emma Fleed, a gifted dancer, balances rigorous rehearsals with wild weekends. Damon Flintov returns from a stint at rehab looking to prove that he’s not an irredeemable screw-up. And Calista Broderick, once part of the popular crowd, chooses, for reasons of her own, to become a hippie outcast.
Into this complicated web, an idealistic young English teacher arrives from a poorer, scruffier part of California. Molly Nicoll strives to connect with her students—without understanding the middle school tragedy that played out online and has continued to reverberate in different ways for all of them.
Written with the rare talent capable of turning teenage drama into urgent, adult fiction, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth makes vivid a modern adolescence lived in the gleam of the virtual, but rich with sorrow, passion, and humanity. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—1980
• Where—Mill Valley, California, USA
• Education—B.A., University of California-Davis; M.A., University of Southern California.
• Currently—lives in Los Angeles, California
Lindsey Lee Johnson is an American author raised in Mill Valley in California's Marin County (north of San Francisco). Her novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth, was published in 2016.
Education
Johnson earned her BA in English from the University of California at Davis and an MA in professional writing from the University of Southern California (USC). She has taught writing at USC, Clark College, and Portland State University. She has also served as a tutor and mentor at a private learning center where her focus has been teaching writing to teenagers.
Early career
After getting a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of California at Davis, and a master of professional writing from the University of Southern California, Johnson got a teaching fellowship at USC. But when the recession hit, her teaching contract wasn't renewed, should could no longer afford her newly purchased house...and she broke up with her boyfriend.
So it was back home to Mill Valley, with tail between her legs, to live in her parents' home. She took what work she could find and ended working with students at Sage Educators, a tutoring and SAT prep firm. After four years, Johnson says she gained a real taste for what life is like today for teenagers.
Writing
“I’ve always wanted to be a novelist,” Johnson told an interviewer for the Marin County Independent Journal. When she was 24, she took her stab at writing a book. It was so bad that she “sat down and wrote another one.” It took four or five attempts before she turned out her first published novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth.
Johnson is now married and lives with her husband in Los Angeles, California. (Adapted from the author's website and from Marin Independent Journal.)
Book Reviews
[An] alarming, compelling and coolly funny debut novel…Ms. Johnson's characters are unpredictable, contradictory and many things at once, which make them particularly satisfying…Here's high school life in all its madness…For its compassion, its ability to see the humanity inside even the most apparently hopeless person and the shimmering intelligence of its prose, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth reminded me a bit of Rick Moody's great 1994 novel, The Ice Storm. You end up sympathizing with and aching for even characters who appear to be irredeemable.
Sarah Lyall - New York Times
Johnson beautifully lays out the complex factors that lead Cally and her friends to brutally bully a fellow student. The cruel episode has a tragic momentum that is hard to read, and also hard to put down. Johnson's novel possesses a propulsive quality, an achievement in a book of, after the initial traumatic event, short character sketches. Yet it moves forward relentlessly, towing the reader with it. I read this book in one, long sitting. A young high school teacher stumbles on buried secrets in this engrossing, multilayered drama.
Trine Tsouderos - Chicago Tribune
If you are cruising for a quality read that’s also an unputdownable quickie, reach for Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel, The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. It’s a high-wire high school drama.
Elle
The characters in Lindsey Lee Johnson’s debut novel affected me in a way I can’t remember feeling since I binge-watched all five seasons of Friday Night Lights. . . . You’ll walk away feeling like you could revisit a hallway drama armed with bulletproof perspective.
Glamour
(Starred review.) Johnson allows [her] dramas to unfold through various shifting perspectives..., keeps the action brisk and deepens readers’ investment, culminating in high school party that goes wrong. Readers may find themselves so swept up in this enthralling novel that they finish it in a single sitting.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Johnson's polished debut novel puts a human face to the details of today's daily headlines of teen life. The characters' wildly risky behaviors are somewhat offset by their ability to excel academically, athletically, and artistically, if not emotionally. This bleak, potent picture will scare the pants off readers. —Beth Andersen, formerly with Ann Arbor Dist. Lib., MI
Library Journal
[A]cutely observed novel [may] have been more successful if the author hadn't felt compelled to include all of the following scenarios: A boy…jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge… A girl preyed on by a pedophile middle school teacher… [A] popular athlete...acting in pornographic gay films. Hella effort but may not make bank.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
We'll add publisher questions if and when they're available; in the meantime, use our LitLovers talking points to start a discussion for The Most Dangerous Place on Earth...then take off on your own:
1. What does the quote from Milton's Paradise Lost have to do with the novel at hand? Why might the author have opened her book with the epigraph?
2. What kind of place is Mill Valley, California, the novel's setting? What kind of life does it provide for the teens involved? Describe the inner lives of these youngsters. What about their parents? What pressures, both familial and peer, face the teens in this novel? Are both teens and problems realistically portrayed?
3. Which of the characters—if any do—you find sympathetic? What about Molly Nicoll, who desperately wants to connect with her students? In what way would you say she is overly invested in their struggles?
4. Talk about teenagers' capacity for cruelty. Does this novel exaggerate the ugly behavior, or is it a realistic description? Is the issue that the novel presents—"rich kids have problems too"—overblown? Or is it serious?
5. Follow-up to Question 4: Consider your own school days? Were your compeers as mean-spirited, petty, or even as vicious as the way Lindsey Lee Johnson portrays her characters? If not...do you think today's teenagers are crueler? Or is it that they have social media to do more damage?
6. What would you like to say to any one, or all, of these young people? What advice would you offer? Or what admonishment?
7. What do you think of the choice of titles? Is it appropriate, or is there one you think might be better?
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)