Living the pirate life in the 21st century

Sara Levine, chair of the graduate writing program at the School of the Art Institute, received her doctorate from Brown with a focus on essays from the 16th century to the present. But her first work of fiction, the exceedingly funny  "Treasure Island!!!" (Europa 2011; $15) tells the story of a self–centered 25–year–old woman who, after reading the classic "Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson, decides to approach her 21st century life by adopting the core values of the book: boldness, resolution, independence and horn–blowing.

"You waken to the possibilities of bravery," says the 25–year–old underemployed protagonist who actually sponges off of everyone while disdaining their feelings and focusing only on her own, "and you chafe a good deal at that thing people call security."

Her decision almost immediately goes awry. Stealing money from her employer at another dead-end job, she buys a $1,000 parrot named Richard (necessary for the core value of boldness), reveals her boyfriend Lars's secrets to his mother as a way for him to develop his emotional honesty and then shows resolution by refusing to move when he tries to get her out of his apartment.

The game plan obviously isn't going well as our extremely narcissistic heroine moves back — parrot and all — to her parents' home.

"I was teaching nonfiction at the University of Iowa and a colleague asked me which essayists I liked, and I mentioned Robert Louis Stevenson," says Levine, explaining how she came to write the book. "I was thinking of Stevenson's essays but he said 'Oh, Treasure Island.'"

Thinking it might be fun to write an essay about not liking the book, Levine picked up a copy and found its swashbuckling style enjoyable.

Using her comedic sense and her love of unreliable narrators, Levine created a protagonist who gets Stevenson — as well as her life — all wrong.

"I love working that gap between what the narrator says and what the reader sees," says Levine. " Much of my writing is about irony and subterranean statements."