HARD TIME

In Thompson's uneven novel, high school freshman Annie Ireland learns about Pantagruel Primo, Esquire, the magical being living inside the baby doll she was issued in her life skills class, the night he saves her from a fire. They become friends, and with his help she writes a fantasy story for English class in which a remote control device "changes the channel" on a teacher and a classmate—from "alive to dead." Reading it, a scheming D.A. decides that Annie is a threat to public safety, and a judge agrees, sentencing Annie and Primo to the county jail for five days (when Arby, her soulmate, stands up for her, he receives the same sentence, for contempt of court). The threesome's lives spin further out of control when Annie's and Arby's parents send the kids to the Back to Basics Center, an expensive reform-oriented boot camp with a pair of sadistic counselors. Annie and Arby are likable, other characters are wickedly exaggerated, and the author creates some memorable moments (Primo magically improves the jail's smell by making plants appear in the cells' toilets). All in all, though, the fantasy elements are not consistently integrated into the plot, and while Primo adds color, he and his counterpart, Slurpagar the Quaint, are mostly unnecessary, except perhaps to provide a mediocre deus ex machina. Fans of the author's The Grounding of Group 6 may appreciate this equally extreme portrayal of society's suspicion of teens, but ultimately this novel never fully gels. Ages 14-up. (Nov.)