Pick the Lock - by A S King (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

From Michael L. Printz Award winner A.S. King, a weird and insightful new novel about a girl intent on picking the lock of her toxic family.

Jane Vandermaker-Cook would like her mother back. As Jane's mother tours the world to support the family, Jane lives and goes to school in a Victorian mansion with her younger brother and their mendacious father who confines Jane's mother to a system of pneumatic tubes whenever she's at home. And then there's weirdly ever-present Aunt Finch, Milorad the gardener, and his rat, Brutus. For Jane, this all seems normal until she suddenly gains access to the files for a lifetime of security-camera videos--her lifetime.

A.S. King's latest surrealist masterpiece follows Jane's bizarre and brilliant journey to reconnect with her mother by breaking out of her shell and composing a punk opera.

Review Quotes

A YALSA Best Fiction for Young Adults Selection

"A roller coaster of a book, Pick the Lock is one thrill after another."--NPR

"Rendered with prodigious imagination and raw emotion, King's surrealistic world is not too far from our own."--The Boston Globe

★ "Printz Award-winning King has written another remarkable, character-driven book that dazzles with its originality. With that and its employment of magic realism, it is sui generis, and at 400-plus pages, it is one of King's most ambitious, and most successful, books. And that, God knows, is no lie."--Booklist, starred review

★ "A worthy literary heir to feminist novels like The Stepford Wives, updated and recast for a new generation, this is a much-needed, thought-provoking tale of survival and triumph."--BCCB, starred review

★ "Cathartic."--Horn Book, starred review

★ "A young adult feminist anthem that thoughtfully addresses issues of abuse."--SLJ, starred review

★ "Three-time Michael L. Printz Award-winner A.S. King employs her signature surrealism to portray the emotional reality of domestic abuse through an unflinching feminist gaze. [B]eathtakingly successful."--Shelf Awareness, starred review

"A.S. King always leans into the weaird and surreal (think Vonnegut with a 16-year-old girls at the centre).... This strange, ambitious novel takes its young readers--and their pain--seriously."--The Irish Times

"Helmed by Jane's penetrating commentary, this unconventional narrative melds punk anthems and bewildering interludes from a shape-shifting rat with King's quirky blend of present-day issues and mind-bending twists to unlock complex, thought-provoking insight."--Publishers Weekly

An NPR Best Book of the Year
A Boston Globe Best Book of the Year
A Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year
A Shelf Awareness Best Book of the Year
A Horn Book Fanfare Book

About the Author

A.S. King is the award-winning author of many acclaimed books for young readers. Her novel Dig won the 2020 Michael L. Printz Award, and Ask The Passengers won the 2013 Los Angeles Times Book Prize. The New York Times called her "one of the best YA writers working today." In 2022, she was awarded the American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award for her significant contribution to YA literature. King lives with her family in Pennsylvania, where she returned after living on a farm and teaching adult literacy in Ireland for more than a decade. www.as-king.com