Overview

Bindy Mackenzie is the smartest girl at Ashbury High. She memorizes class outlines to help her teachers. She holds lunchtime therapy sessions for her fellow students. She is always kind, polite, and helpful. And she wears crazy nail polish to show she's a free spirit. But something is missing. And at the first session of the Friendship and Development Project, Bindy's worst suspicions are confirmed. Nobody likes her. Suddenly things begin to unravel. Bindy fails an exam. She can't sleep. She snaps at the principal. And she gets obsessed with the word Cincinnati. (cont.)

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Kikrus<br>Told in emails, transcripts, memos and other musings, Bindy records the eventful start of Year 11<br>at Ashbury, an Australian private school Moriarty has portrayed in her previous work. Bindy is an<br>overachiever who thinks her classmates, teachers and even the School Board are desperately in need<br>of her input. The FAD ( Friendship and Development ) group, a new class taught by Try Montaine, <br>really needs her help. Bindy's hair, worn in two long braids rolled on the sides of her head, becomes<br>symbolic of her rigid, uncool, uptight existence. The murder of Bindy seems impossible, as she is the<br>main character, and Bindy is unaware of her ability to cause enmity with that level of vitriol, being<br>more comfy with just being irritating. Yet upon becoming aware of her own failings, she's equally<br>committed to atoning completely. Bindy's unreliable narration provides most of the humor and<br>suspense, hitting all the typical buttons Moriarty fans have come to expect, including a strange family<br>life and an over-the-top denouement. As memorably unique as Bindy herself. (Fiction. YA) <br>Booklist<br>Moriarty follows The Year of Secret Assignments (2004) with another uproarious novel written entirely in diary entries, school assignments, transcripts, and other inventive formats. Once again the setting is Ashbury High, in Sydney, Australia, and Bindy MacKenzie, who had a pivotal cameo in Assignments, returns as the central character. Brilliant, precocious Bindy ( I've been struggling a bit with Ulysses by James Joyce, she wrote in her diary as a ten-years-old) is frustrated when her gestures of kindness towards fellow students go unappreciated. Her aggressive resistance to a new required course, Friendship and Development, sharply alienates a group of her fellow classmates, whom she nicknames the Venomous Six. But as she gradually gains self-awareness, it's these students, along with dreamy transfer student, Finnegan, who embrace, support, and

Author Information

Jaclyn Moriarty grew up in Sydney, Australia, with 4 sisters, 1 brother, 2 dogs, and 12 chickens. She studied law at the University of Sydney, Yale, and Cambridge, and worked as an entertainment lawyer before she wrote the Ashbury High novels, including THE YEAR OF SECRET ASSIGNMENTS, THE MURDER OF BINDY MACKENZIE, and THE GHOSTS OF ASHBURY HIGH. She still lives in Sydney, with her little boy, Charlie.

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