Why is everyone angry with Jonathan? Suspended from school thanks to an inexcusable misstep, the hyper-savvy and cyber-sexed fifteen-year old Jonathan heads to Manhattan to care for his high-living, once-glamorous godfather, who has recently had a stroke. But the siren song of the city keeps him distracted. Jonathan meets the worldly Beatriz, and his life threatens to take a sharp turn. Along the way, he has his say about parents, love, sex, friendship, art, and the world at large. Speaking directly to the obsessions of our present, Jonathan manages to remind us, and himself, that no one knows how anything will turn out until it happens. As someone once said, our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately. George Scialabba said Smedley is, "rendered in astonishingly vivid, funny, soulful, and inventive prose."And, Tom Sleigh wrote, "As sophisticated and purely strange as Roberto Bolano, as vulnerable as Salinger, ... Smedley's Secret Guide to World Literature makes you feel, without the least bit of strain, that you're in the hands of a comic genius."