Burger Wuss reminds me of some of those early John Hughes movies from the 80s like Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller's Day Off, only smarter and funnier. Anderson either remembers what it's like to be a teenager or he's very observant. Or maybe both.
Sixteen-year-old Anthony has just lost the love of his life to Turner, a sadistic four-time Employee-of-the-Month at a fast-food joint called O'Dermott's (which has many similarities to a certain unnamed franchise that features a large yellow letter of the alphabet between L and N). The best way to exact revenge, Anthony decides, is to get a job at O'Dermott's working right alongside Turner. But since this is not only fiction, but teen fiction, things can go wildly off-course.
It's not long before Anthony finds himself in the middle of a fierce rivalry between O'Dermott's and cross-town fast-food rival Burger Queen (in one of the funniest softball games ever captured in print). He also strikes up a friendship (or is it a partnership?) with Shunt, a homeless co-worker seeking to topple the restaurant's corporate structure, if at all possible, by anarchy. Add to the mix two clueless parents, two sickeningly in-love coworkers and a manager with way too much corporate spirit.
Burger Wuss is a hilarious, yet sympathetic look at teenage love and revenge, filled with clever dialogue and authenticity. All of Anderson's novels are wildly different from one another, but they all feature top-notch writing. For newcomers, Burger Wuss is a great, entertaining place to start.
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