24 Hours

More about the book

It is Friday at 5:10 PM, and Ellis has just left school. As he walks through the streets of his hometown, he dreams of his future student life when he encounters Jackie Cattle. This meeting sets off the craziest 24 hours of his life. Jackie, a shady character, persuades Ellis to join him at a party. They crash the event uninvited, as Jackie wants to prevent his girlfriend Ursa from being seduced by the attractive host, Christo. After an inevitable argument, Ellis, Jackie, Ursa, and Leona, Ursa's younger sister, flee to the "Land of Smiles," a run-down motel where the sisters have been living since their parents' death. There, Ellis meets eccentric characters. When Christo kidnaps the baby Shelley out of revenge, events spiral out of control. Ellis falls for Leona, drinks to the point of unconsciousness for the first time, and wakes up with a shaved head. In a spectacular chase, he damages his mother's car, gets tattooed by a freak, and ultimately rescues Christo and Shelley by reciting on a rooftop at a dizzying height. By Saturday at 5:10 PM, nothing is as it was.