The book
“Treasure Island!!! is undeniable: insane, hilarious and irreverent.”—Alice Sebold
When a college graduate with a history of hapless jobs (ice cream scooper; gift wrapper; laziest ever part-time clerk at The Pet Library) reads Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel Treasure Island, she is dumbstruck by the timid design of her life. When had she ever dreamed a scheme? When had she ever done a foolish, over-bold act? When had she ever, like Jim Hawkins, broke from her friends, raced for the beach, stolen a boat, killed a man, and eliminated an obstacle that stood in the way of her getting a hunk of gold? Convinced that Stevenson’s book is cosmically intended for her, she redesigns her life according to its Core Values: boldness, resolution, independence and horn-blowing. Accompanied by her mother, her sister, and a hostile Amazon parrot that refuses to follow the script, our heroine embarks on a domestic adventure more frightening than anything she’d originally planned.
Treasure Island!!! is the story of a ferocious obsession, told by an new and utterly original voice. It is intelligent, perverse, funny, relentlessly self-extricating, and merciless in its vivisection of family dynamics in today’s America.
The author
Sara Levine
Sara Levine teaches at the Art Institute of Chicago. Her stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, Nerve, Conjunctions, Necessary Fiction, Sonora Review, and other magazines. Treasure Island!!! Is her first novel.
Press
- Jul 8 2024
A Top 10 Book of the 21st Century, according to Paul Tremblay
— New York Times Book Review - Jul 3 2024
“Short and absolutely delightful.”
— Electric Lit - Sep 10 2021
“Throw yourself headlong into the tornado of chaos that is the protagonist of Sara Levine’s Treasure Island!!!”
— Vulture - Aug 1 2020
“Darkly funny.”
— Travel and Leisure - Jan 28 2014
Dazed Digital: Cited as one of the Top Ten Female Protagonists in Books in which Girls Rule - Jan 14 2014
“Incisive and intelligent . . . compelling.”
— Buzzfeed