346C: Infant Living in Busted Out TV

Ive been searching for this book for some time now, this book is paperback, white, red, and black. It is written in first person in the "slang" dialect of the uneducated teenage female main character. Very very dark and depicting the hardships of loners in the streets.

In the beginning the main female is joined by a similarly aged male soaked in blood "so much you could smell the iron in it" holding an infant he claims is his brother, they converse about her pistol deemed a "gat". Later, they link with another male and another female and eventually become trapped in the snow on a wooded road in a van and car. They run the van out of fuel staying warm and stay together trapped and freezing in the van with the infant in a busted out T.V. Their only food is a single fish (religious allusion) - they give it to the other female character as she is the closest to death but, perhaps because of her unwillingness to be selfish, she is incapable of swallowing it and holds it in her mouth as "god would not let her swallow it." She freezes to death naked, the main character admires her body as she dies.

The latter male character eventually attempts to commit suicide with the gat, but it dosen't fire and instead he just walks into the forest to freeze. At this point the 2 original characters and the infant move to the car and idle it out of fuel staying warm. They walk back to the van and the main character has a hallucination or vision about the infant flying off with the T.V. Later, the original male character sets out for help, leaving the main character and infant in the van. They are rescued shortly after by a farmer. She hears knocking at the door of the van but hesitates, as she denies it can be real and eventually opens the door to find just a chicken, then the farmer. The farmer takes the main character and infant to his pad and the main character begins to take a shower but hesitates. Feeling the farmer watching her, she draws crowsfeet in the fog on the mirror to cheer herself up.

1 thought on “346C: Infant Living in Busted Out TV

  1. Jack Lechner

    This might be “31: Triple-Live Skate Madness,” a 2001 novel by C. Gibbons. It has the black-and-red cover, the “iron” line, and a farmer. That’s all I can tell from a search online!

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