“Freiman’s style, meanwhile, is nimble and pert, parkouring disrespectfully across the suburban mall of the English language with little regard for its more bipedal shoppers. Inappropriation doesn’t have that full-Brazilian look sometimes favored by the New York literati, but something bushier. When Ziggy gets her period, the blood leaves stains under her fingernails “like the dark veins of prawn shit.” When holding in a sob, Ziggy’s body gets “tight and steamy as a wonton.” Horny teenage boys “unfurl” in Lex’s presence, “pink and willing like well-walked dog tongues.” A running gag about a vertically challenged American action hero delights at every resurfacing, as Freiman provides a string of ever more creative epithets for the technically nameless celebrity, who may or may not have a film opening in the summer. The author has a particular love of verbing, and she tucks her coinages into paragraphs like tiny, spiky gifts. A lit joint “jewels”; pubic mounds “cauliflower”; a tiny boy “turtles” from his ill-fitting formal wear. For a moment, your eyes are teenagers again, groping inexpertly at the sentence’s bra clasp. Reading rebecomes gawky. The eye trips. The mind chrysanthemums.”