Leo@fergusrules.com

by Arne Tangherlini and Pagan Kennedy

Leonora (Leo) is a fourteen year-old Filipina/Italian/American. A child of divorce, an unrepentant wise-ass, and a brilliant hacker who prefers virtual environments to real life -- until the one... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0965457877
• ISBN13: 9780965457873
• Release Date: October 1999
• Publisher: Leapfrog Press
• Length: 215 Pages
• Weight: 0.58 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.7"

Customer Reviews

Postmodern cyberjoyride

This is an excellent joyride through the at times disjointed and wonderfully absurd spaces that can only exist in the imagination and, curiously enough, the cyberworld. It is, as Stecconi suggests, a true picaresque, but a picaresque with attitude. Although Poulsen wants plot-perhaps only plot-what Tangherlini does here is far more intriguing, and quite a bit more complex than the typical plot driven novel that some readers want spoon fed to them. Clearly not for the unsophisticated yahoo, Leo is part punk, part idealist, while her bumbling monastic counterpart is part cartoon character, part detective, part sage, part dogmatist. It is funny-albeit predictable-that the people who most detest this book are the ones that Leo avers in her ongoing critique of contemporary educational theory, revisionist historians, and the leveling of discourse pressaged by the internet. What seems lost on some readers is the fabulous postmodern intertextuality that forms the basis for so much of this work but which, at the same time, is questioned unflinchingly by the protagonist herself. Leo@fergusrules.com truly is, as Hutcheon opines, an example of the "installing and subverting" that is a hallmark of the postmodern. And yet.

the cybernovel meets the classics and...

...and they all -- and we -- have a great time. Arne Tangherlini's book defies, no doubt by design, any simple categorization. For the adventurous and reflective reader,young in age or only in spirit, its protean character will be its appeal. What draws us in first is the sheer JOY IN LANGUAGE, the delight in the art of composition, which, as in the Italian classic which it remembers and recalls, is seductive even when depicting scenes of the most fantastical horror or, as in more contemporary literature, when painting moods of the utmost banality. As in poetry worthy of the name and in the best and most exhilarating of prose, every word and phrase here, one feels, has been chosen and crafted for a reason. Tangherlini's palette is vast, his range of reference catholic (in the sense of aspiring to the universal). Precisely for this reason, the book is accessible on many levels, as a novel of teen-age angst in the cyberage or as a most adult meditation on the "post-modern" world, cyber- and extracyber-.Unlike most of the labyrinthine virtual realities which many of us live part of our lives in every day, that which Tangherlini builds is not an escape from the world but a window on to it, in all its squalor and splendor. We leave Leo's i-world more attuned to the one going on around us.

great book-fiercly independent

'leo@fergusrules.com' is one of those rare books that should have more teenagers reading on their own without having to rely on television as their means of entertainment. Leonora; a filopino-italian-american teenager lives with her grandmother in Manila, where she spends all of her free time out of school on a computer-gaming network called 'Apeiron' A friend from school, Bri, is lost on the network and it is up to Leonora (accompanied by an obese monk) to save him. They meet odd encounters on the way, and if you were ever an awkward teenager (or are now) you've probably had dreams similar to this.

Brilliant! A cyber-labyrinth bound to be a classic!

Tangherlini's story of a young Italian American Pillipina is engaging, hilarious, dark, entrancing, maddening, wonderful, and really, really well written. I particularly loved the mall rats and the Cardboard Box emporium. I can easily see this becoming a classic--something you'd read in high school (several times), remember like you remember Catcher in the Rye or Phantom Tollbooth (or both), and then come back to later in life, only to realize that, yes, it really is that good.

A must read novel for adults and young adults

This novel is breathtakingly inventive and well written. Do not classify it as a young adult book-- the cyber storyline will capture the imagination of adults. A must read for anyone who loved Narnia!