Venice Beach is where 1969 never died. If fact, a lot of people came there in 1969 and never left. Venice Beach smells like pot and the ocean. It is a circus that never ends. People don’t judge. They dance for no reason, laugh for no reason, and will say whatever is on their mind [...]
"Here's a confession: I like Doug Schaffer more than I ever liked his idol Dean Moriarty, and I had much more fun reading Maya Sloan's High Before Homeroom than I ever had reading its literary progenitor, On the Road."
-Ayelet Waldman, author of Red Hook Road and Bad Mother
“I love this book. Doug Schaffer – sixteen years old and in an almost-constant state of arousal, as only a sixteen-year-old boy can be – is everything you'd hope for in a narrator: disarmingly honest and irreverent and affable and funny – very funny. Maya Sloan is a mad scientist of a novelist, filling her Petri dish with the cells of J. D. Salinger, William Burroughs, and Mark Twain, but ultimately this novel is her own glorious creation: a smart and wholly original take on what it means to yearn, in all its manifestations, in the 21st century.” --John McNally, author of After the Workshop
"Maya Sloan's characters could be deemed purely comic if they weren't so realistic, tender if they weren't so jaded, and heartwarming if their lives weren't so heart-wrenching. All of which makes this a darkly compelling -- possibly controversial -- coming-of-age novel. High Before Homeroom is a wild debut from a brilliant new novelist."
-- Julianna Baggott, author of The Miss America Family and co-author of Which Brings Me to You
No matter how profane it may seem at times, High Before Homeroom, like Youth in Revolt, is ultimately a charming take on one nerd's coming of age. In this assured debut, Maya Sloan clears the gender barrier, giving us the hapless Doug Schaffer, sixteen and obsessed with sex, love and Kerouac.
--Stewart O'Nan, author of Snow Angels and The Speed Queen
"Searing one moment, laugh-out-loud funny the next, Maya Sloan's High Before Homeroom is an honest, surprising, and dazzling debut."
-- Davy Rothbart, FOUND Magazine and This American Life
"Funny, poignant, and profane, this energetic coming-of-age novel about a young outsider who takes a radical path to coolness marks Maya Sloan as an engaging new young novelist to watch."
--Rilla Askew, author of Fire in Beulah and Harpsong, winner of the 2009 Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters
