Missy
Chris Hannan
A rowdy, exuberant, badly behaved blast of an adventure, Missy begins in 1862 with Dol McQueen, nineteen-year-old flash girl and opium user, heading for a boom town in the American West. On the way she prevents a man from hanging himself only to discover he is a murderous pimp.
When he turns up later at the saloon where she has found work with some stolen goods he wants her to hide, Dol grabs the chance to start a new life and takes off into the wilderness with the loot and all hell in pursuit. Her alcoholic mother is an added burden on the mad, epic journey: can Dol save herself, her mother and their poisonous relationship?
Like her literary predecessors, Becky Sharpe and Moll Flanders, Dol is a flawed but irresistible anti-heroine, and Missy is an astounding debut.
Product Details
About Chris Hannan
Reviews for Missy
The Times
Narrated by one of the more luminous characters in recent fiction
Guardian
A gorgeously sassy opening, it is surprising how winning, and how powerful, the voice of Dol McQueen, 19th-century American "flash-girl" actually is... Hannan has traversed the limits of history and given us a thoroughly modern woman
Independent
Hannan is comparable to no playwright working today so much as the Renaissance masters. He has a density of expression, a control of populous scenes, a sense of dramatic development and a sheer verve which few writers, living or dead, can touch
Sunday Times
An action-packed page-turner...riveting
Scotland on Sunday