A Cigarette Lit Backwards: A Novel

by Tea Hacic-Vlahovic Narrated by Tea Hacic-Vlahovic

Overview

Set in the punk-rock scene of the early 2000s and vibrating with the intense ache of bad choices and deep longing, a needle-sharp portrait of a young woman and how far she'll go to find acceptance

Kat is dying to be accepted by the North Carolina punks; she is totally desperate to seem cool. At a punk show, she ends up backstage with a rock star and gets noticed by a photojournalist. And then-a dream come true for Kat-her reputation as a groupie icon skyrockets. But to maintain this notoriety, Kat makes a series of devastating choices, and soon enough, she becomes unrecognizable to herself and others.

Tea Hacic-Vlahovic's A Cigarette Lit Backwards is a sometimes funny, often brutally honest audiobook about ambition and self-discovery and how a world of glamour and cool exerts its bold and breathless pull. In prose that seduces, glitters, and exhilarates, Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written a story that is both a wild party and a somber reckoning, consolidating her status as a thrilling and essential new voice for our time.

Editorial Reviews

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

With refreshing honesty and an empathetic tone, author Tea Hacic-Vlahovic narrates this first-person story of a music-obsessed teen named Kat who aspires to be part of the North Carolina punk-rock scene in the early 2000s. While attending a show, Kat achieves a measure of glory when a journalist snaps a photo of her sitting on the lap of a famous musician. With her youthful timbre and relaxed pacing, Hacic-Vlahovic recounts incident after incident of Kat’s demonstrating poor judgment in her friendships, romantic encounters, and school obligations. Hacic-Vlahovic's confessional style and her choice not to clearly differentiate the story’s many young characters make this audiobook sound more like a memoir than a novel. Fans of young adult literature, especially stories of music culture, will find much to appreciate. M.J. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Greg Attonito of The Bouncing Souls

Almost everyone has an interesting story. Few of us have the ability or the courage to navigate those experiences, process them, then convert them into a narrative that can keep the rest of us on the edge of our seat. An even smaller number of us have the ability to carve out our own story in a way that helps us connect and care about each other a little bit more. Tea has checked all those boxes with A Cigarette Lit Backwards and maybe a few more.”

Brendan Jay Sullivan

Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written a perfect coming-of-age story—with a perfect soundtrack—that walks the fragile in-between of finding out who you are and trying not to let other people decide for you. Welcome to the party room.”

author of Happy Hour Marlowe Granados

"Hacic-Vlahovic perfectly captures that clumsy era of teenage girlhood set in small town North Carolina. A time capsule of growing up in the noughties; a story of sixteen-year-old Kat beginning to grasp her powers. Punk, cut with tenderness, like all true street kids."

From the Publisher

Hacic-Vlahovic’s writing is solid, inhabiting Kat’s voice with both hardness and humor . . . This is a self-assured sophomore effort from a writer to watch. Appropriately hardcore but deceptively sweet, too.”

—Kirkus Reviews

“Almost everyone has an interesting story. Few of us have the ability or the courage to navigate those experiences, process them, then convert them into a narrative that can keep the rest of us on the edge of our seat. An even smaller number of us have the ability to carve out our own story in a way that helps us connect and care about each other a little bit more. Tea has checked all those boxes with A Cigarette Lit Backwards and maybe a few more.”

—Greg Attonito of The Bouncing Souls

“Tea Hacic-Vlahovic has written a perfect coming-of-age story—with a perfect soundtrack—that walks the fragile in-between of finding out who you are and trying not to let other people decide for you. Welcome to the party room.”

—Brendan Jay Sullivan, author of Rivington was Ours: Lady Gaga, the Lower East Side, and the Prime of

"Hacic-Vlahovic perfectly captures that clumsy era of teenage girlhood set in small town North Carolina. A time capsule of growing up in the noughties; a story of sixteen-year-old Kat beginning to grasp her powers. Punk, cut with tenderness, like all true street kids."—Marlowe Granados, author of Happy Hour

OCTOBER 2022 - AudioFile

With refreshing honesty and an empathetic tone, author Tea Hacic-Vlahovic narrates this first-person story of a music-obsessed teen named Kat who aspires to be part of the North Carolina punk-rock scene in the early 2000s. While attending a show, Kat achieves a measure of glory when a journalist snaps a photo of her sitting on the lap of a famous musician. With her youthful timbre and relaxed pacing, Hacic-Vlahovic recounts incident after incident of Kat’s demonstrating poor judgment in her friendships, romantic encounters, and school obligations. Hacic-Vlahovic's confessional style and her choice not to clearly differentiate the story’s many young characters make this audiobook sound more like a memoir than a novel. Fans of young adult literature, especially stories of music culture, will find much to appreciate. M.J. © AudioFile 2022, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

2022-09-28
A young North Carolina woman finds more than she bargained for in her local punk scene.

Kat, the 16-year-old narrator of Hacic-Vlahovic’s second novel, is a steady hand at the piano, playing Beethoven and Chopin with ease, but her heart belongs to another kind of music: the punk rock that she’s recently discovered. She started out as a “poseur” but fell in love with the North Carolina punk scene and spends many nights hanging out at Dexter’s Lab, a house that serves as a drunken, drug-fueled haven for local crust punks living like “a million rats, scurrying out from gutters, trash cans, and pipes, taking twisted routes until meeting in a filthy abyss.” As “the least cool person in [her] group,” she’s desperate to belong, and her wish comes true after she hangs out backstage with a visiting rocker and a website reporter who witnesses their conversation proclaims her a “tiny sex martyr” and “local teenage groupie.” Suddenly, she goes from striver to star, earning the respect of her compeers: “Everything boring about me was suddenly fascinating. My irrelevance turned important. My obscurity became crucial.” Her newfound local fame threatens to poison her life, though: She breaks the heart of a young man who cares for her, almost drops out of high school, and falls for a fellow punk whose terrible decisions are coming close to destroying his life, and hers along with it. Hacic-Vlahovic could have turned this story into a typical cautionary tale, but it isn’t that. The author writes about Kat with compassion and respect; she gets Kat and never condescends to her. Kat is a fully fledged character: Beneath her punk-as-fuck exterior, she’s naïve and (though she’d hate to hear it) sweet; while she loves her hard-edged music, she also has an almost childlike fondness for her immigrant parents and grilled cheese sandwiches. Hacic-Vlahovic’s writing is solid, inhabiting Kat’s voice with both hardness and humor: “Teachers often told me that if I ‘applied’ myself more I could get into Ivy League schools,” the teenager reflects at one point. “So I applied myself less.” This is a self-assured sophomore effort from a writer to watch.

Appropriately hardcore but deceptively sweet, too.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940175619363
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	09/20/2022
Edition description:	Unabridged

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